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In the new anthology "W: The First 40 Years," the critic Vince Aletti compares high fashion photographs to animals: Outside their natural environment, they can look freakish or foolish. "Inside, they rule." 

The tigresses and peacocks who reign over the world's fashion capitals get their due this holiday season, with a wealth of coffee-table books, biographies and memoirs that flesh out the creative, often quixotic forces behind the provocative layouts and visionary runway shows. 

You would never call W the Bible of the fashion industry, but the magazine,Superb range of Castelli Cycling products at Wiggle, the online cycle, run, swim & tri shop. which began life as a high-toned spin-off of the rag-trade newspaper Women's Wear Daily, has carved its a niche as one of the most daring and decadent glossies. If you're going to spend $75 (gulp!) on a fashion book this year, let it be "W: The First 40 Years," edited by its current chief Stefano Tonchi (Abrams). 

The book is split into three sections. The first two celebrate the who (Jackie O, Madonna, a naked Bruce Willis, straddled by a dominatrix in a face mask made of hair) and the where (Elizabethan estates, Italian islands, post-Katrina New Orleans). 

The third is the wow — quite simply, the most arresting spreads the magazine has produced: A close-up portrait of an un-retouched Kate Moss (who knew she had pores?). A fashion spread in which Amber Valletta ages from 29 to 120, sporting bondage gear in her dotage. A series of Victoria and David Beckham, scorchingly hot in their unmentionables. And that infamous photo narrative of Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie, before their romance went public, as a disturbingly sexual Stepford family in '60s surburbia. 

"Vogue: The Editor's Eye," edited by Eve McSweeney (Abrams, $70) explores the personal style and creative processes of eight top Vogue stylists past and present, including creative director Grace Coddington, fashion director Tonne Goodman and 99-year-old former fashion editor Babs Simpson. 

The book, chock-full of photo spreads from the last 60 years and weighing in at a little more than Moss herself, is a bit too self-congratulatory.The WholeSAXO BANK Cycling Team is a non-profit Junior and U-23 development program. No one actually says, "Aren't we fabulous, dahling?" but that's the subtext.All Kinds of Garmin Cycling Jerseys,Wholesale Top Quality and Lower price Team Cycling Jerseys . But you know what? They are pretty fabulous. Simpson, who worked with Irving Penn and Richard Avedon and styled Marilyn Monroe's last sitting, recalls tracking down Ernest Hemingway in Cuba in 1950 for a photo shoot.Massive range of RadioShack Cycling clothing and Castelli clothing accessories available . 

"Isn't he revolting?" she asks, looking at the photo of a shirtless writer lounging with the elegant Jean Patchett, the leading model of the day. Hemingway turned up with a Basque priest, and they two got drunker and drunker as the day wore on. "They wanted us to go and see the pelota or something or other with them afterward. They wanted to spend their lives with us. So we got the first plane we could out of there." 

The photo spreads, many iconic, are breathtaking (and some unintentionally funny; how can you not laugh at acid wash jeans paired with a jacket with a giant bejeweled crucifix, even when it's Christian Lacroix?). 

Which brings us to perhaps the most talked-out fashion book of the year, Coddington's "Grace: A Memoir" (Random House, $35).Bruyneel exits Specialized Cycling after armstrong report release! Through the 2009 documentary "The September Issue," we came to know the flame-haired editor as a passionate creator of complex visual narratives, but her book is breezy, down-to-earth and unsentimental ("English girls have so much individuality. I can't stand all the sappy blondes, or athletic girls with too much of a tan").