ONE THE SHELF: BOOKS FOR ALL REASONS : LACHAPELLE'S VISION.

Byline: Rob Lowman Entertainment Editor

When famous subjects check in for a photo session with David Lachapelle, they find themselves in a new and often bizarre reality.

``When you stay at a hotel, you're living for one day in a place where you don't normally live. That feeling can be true with photographs, too,'' Lachapelle writes in his book, ``Hotel Lachapelle'' (Bullfinch Press/Callaway; $60).

Here you'll find Marilyn Manson working as a school crossing guard, Madonna as a Krishna goddess, Leonardo DiCaprio becoming Marlon Brando in ``The Wild One,'' Pamela Anderson as a saint, and Ewan McGregor peering into a doll house while his body bleeds from a gunshot wound fired from Barbie's diminutive gun. There are also heads sewn onto different-colored bodies, and an overweight man with an amazing Madonna tattoo in Lachapelle's alternate reality.

Many of these images have been in magazines, but the photographer has saved some of his more outrageous for the book.

The thrill of victory, the agony of defeat

Devout sports fans and casual observers alike will get caught up in some of the greatest sports moments this century with ``And the Crowd Goes Wild: Relive the Most Celebrated Sporting Events Ever Broadcast,'' (book with two audio CDs) by Joe Garner, with foreword by Hank Aaron, afterword by Wayne Gretzy and narration by Bob Costas (Garner; $49.95).

You'll hear how ``Monday Night Football's'' play-by-play man made his mark when he exclaimed, ``Do you believe in miracles? Yes,'' after the United States Olympic hockey team upset the Soviet Union on its way to winning the gold medal in 1980.

There's ``The Giants win the pennant! The Giants win the pennant!'' after Bobby Thompson's dramatic home run to beat the Dodgers in the '51 playoffs.

And it also includes Franco Harris making the ``Immaculate Reception,'' Secretariat winning the Triple Crown, Babe Ruth's World Series ``shot'' in 1932, and the dramatic penalty shootout win in the 1999 Women's World Cup.

This collection captures in words, images and through recordings the essence of what makes sports so exciting.

A century remembered

If anyone can look back on the 20th century with any authority, it's the National Geographic Society.

In ``National Geographic Eyewitness to the 20th Century'' (National Geographic Society; $40), the last 100 years are broken into decade-long sections, such as ``The Age of Big Business'' (1900 to 1909) and ``Challenging the Establishment'' (1960 to 1969).

This compilation of photographs, essays and time lines succinctly captures each era. There are a number of historical essays by respected scholars and other experts on topics such as ``Adventure and Exploration,'' ``Mapping Our World'' and ``Earth's Forces.''

And in the spirit of maintaining balance between history and popular culture, the time line section includes brief items on everything from the moon landing in 1969 to ``Sesame Street's'' debut the same year.

Rudi, Rudi, Rudi

File this under something for the time capsule. Fashion designer Rudi Gernreich in many ways pioneered the look of the trippy '60s (think of the latest ``Austin Powers'' movie), though I'm not sure who wore his own creations, especially the topless bathing suit. But his frenetic-looking designs and eye-catching use of colors remain provocative today.

In ``The Rudi Gernreich Book,'' by Peggy Moffitt and William Claxton (Taschen; $29.99), Moffitt, who modeled most of the clothes, provides commentary and recollections on the career of Gernreich, who died in 1985. Well-known photographer Claxton took the pictures, including those with Moffitt and other '60 icons such as Steve McQueen and the Byrds.

Remembering Norma Jean

Thirty-seven years after her death, Marilyn Monroe still holds sway over the public's imagination.

In ``The Marilyn Encyclopedia,'' by Adam Victor (Overlook; $55), a 350-page volume, Victor lavishly chronicles every bit of news, trivia and folklore involving Monroe, from what she said, to what she read, what she listened to, and what was said about her. There are tons of photos - from the candid to the glamorous - information about her films, quotes from reviews, anecdotes, gossip and famous sayings. All of Marilyn's relationships - husbands, lovers, family members, directors, co-stars - are catalogued, as are conspiracy theories about her death. There is a photo taken in 1961 on the set of ``The Misfits'' with the caption pointing out that it's possible to ``detect the first signs of aging on Marilyn's face,'' a reminder of how her early death contributed to her legend.

On the distaff side 

These are ``photographs of people with nothing more in common than that they are women (and living in America at the end of the 20th century), all - well almost all - fully clothed,'' writes Susan Sontag in the preface of Annie Leibovitz's latest work, ``Women'' (Random House; $75).

Leibovitz, who in her years working for Rolling Stone, Vogue and Vanity Fair magazines photographed hundreds of celebrities, has turned her lens on a wide range of subjects, from those in the arts, such as playwright/performer Anna Deavere Smith, to those in the fields, including farmer Karen Fedrau. Also included in this extraordinary collection of black-and-white and color portraits are coal miners, socialites, first ladies, artists, domestic-violence victims, an astronaut, a surgeon, a maid and Leibovitz's mother. ``Each of these pictures must stand on its own,'' Sontag writes, but Leibovitz's collection makes some unexpected connections.

Short takes

Even the dated jokes are funny in ``The New Yorker 75th Anniversary Cartoon Collection,'' edited by Bob Mankoff (Pocket Books; $40). The sophistication of the material never gets in the way of the silliness or humor.

The ``superrealist'' works of art in ``Carol A. Feuerman: Sculpture'' by Dena Merriam and Eleanor Munro with photographs by David Finn (Hudson Hills Press; $45) are more lifelike than many of the people you see around you. Many of the sculptures - oil-painted molded resin - from different angles give the reader an eerie and fascinating perspective.

In ``Wonders of the African World'' (Knopf; $40), Henry Gates Jr., chair of African-American studies at Harvard, traveled across Africa to learn about the history of some of the ``lost'' civilizations of that continent. With photographs by Lynn Davis, this companion book to the PBS series is informative and provocative.

There are too many cute animal books clogging up stores, but ``Fay,'' by William Wegman (Hyperion; $26.95), manages to be more than that and still be cute. The artist/photographer chronicles life with his dog Fay, who he used as a model in much of his work over a 10-year-period. Surprisingly heartfelt.

Originally known as a frightmeister, Clive Barker has moved away from scare tactics and become more of a storyteller in his career, even spinning yarns for children. On the jacket of ``The Essential Clive Barker'' (HarperCollins; $26 - to be published Dec. 1) there is a quote from the great Argentine writer Jorge Luis Borges: ``A man sets himself the task of portraying the world.'' It is clear, judging by the works included here, that Barker has set himself that task, but because of the fantastical nature of the tales, it's also clear that Barker has a strange and unique perspective on the world.

There is never a shortage of film books, but ``Sins in Soft Focus: Pre-Code Hollywood'' by Mark A. Vieira (Abrams; $39.95) examines an era of Tinseltown rarely shown. The code referred to is the 1934 Hays Code, which was meant to clean up the movie industry before any more of its decadence reached the screen. But as Vieira points out, pre-Code days were also a creative period for filmmakers who pushed the limits, both visually and in subject matter. The book contains 275 movie stills, many that have rarely been seen.

If I say eurthymics, do you think rock group or ``a system of rhythmical bodily movements ... originally taught by Emile Jacques-Delcroze.'' If you thought the latter, you were probably peeking at ``20th Century Words: The Story of the New Words in English Over the Last Hundred Years'' (Oxford; $26). Surprisingly, you'll find that some words don't come from the eras you would expect. D-Day was originally a World War I term, while the Holocaust wasn't called that until 1957. A book for word freaks - no pictures.

Short takes, part two

``Live your life around your dreams and you live life like the movie it was meant to be'' is one of the aphorisms that David Byrne uses in ``Your Action World: Winners Are Losers With a New Attitude'' (Chronicle Books; $29.95). Best-known as a Talking Head, Byrne cleverly subverts many of the images and inspirational messages that inundate us daily and, using his photos, turns them into corporate-looking ads as a way of critiquing our culture. Unlike books about art, this book is a work of art, complete with a funky-looking plastic cover.

Since 1962, that big island just south of Florida may as well have been a million miles away. In ``Cuba,'' with photographs by David Alan Harvey and essays by Elizabeth Newhouse (National Geographic; $50), we get a glimpse of a country in turmoil.

``National Geographic Photographs: The Milestones - A Visual Legacy of the World'' (National Geographic; $50) contains 250 National Geographic Society photographs chronologically arranged from 1896 through the present, including some that have never been published before. Accompanying these spectacular images are the stories behind them, including the photographers' accounts of the dangers, adventures and technical innovations behind their work.

``Alice's Adventures in Wonderland'' by Lewis Carroll is beautifully illustrated by Helen Oxenbury in this new unabridged edition of the 1865 story of a girl who followed a rabbit down the wrong hole (Candlewick Press; $24.99). Oxenbury's illustrations are amusing enough to delight children and stylized enough to catch adults' interest.

Knowing the distance for the longest blindfolded sky walk may win you a bet. How about most stunts by a living actor? Or the most silly statistics in a book? Oh, the answer to that isn't in the ``Guinness World Records 2000: Millennium Edition'' (Guinness; $25.95), but the other two are - along with a lot of other odd stuff. By the way, the answers to the first two questions are Jackie Chan and 600 feet. You figure out which is which.

It's only a tabloid world, and who knew this better than the late Tizzy Secchiaroli, one of the original paparazzi. As Secchiaroli said on the birth of the paparazzi, ``We found that with small incidents created deliberately, we could get pictures that could earn us a lot of money.'' To his credit, though, the photographs in ``Tizzy Secchiaroli: Greatest of the Paparazzi'' by Diego Mormorio (Abrams; $49.50) capture more than stars trying to hide their faces. Secchiaroli also had a knack for finding interesting street scenes.

CAPTION(S):

7 Photos

Photo: (1 -- 2 -- color) no caption (The Rudi Gernreich Book, Peggy Moffitt)

(3 -- 4 -- color) no caption (Book covers)

(5 -- 6 -- color) no caption (Annie Leibovitz's Women, Gwyneth Paltrow and Blythe Danner)

(7 -- 8 -- color) no caption (National Geographic Eyewitness to the 20th Century, Kennedy family)