Vintage Krakow

If you have a friend who loves Cracow - or that friend just happens to be you - an early Christmas present has just arrived on the shelves. Bosz has streaked away as one of the finest Polish publishing houses of recent years, and they've just brought out another cracker.

Krakow: Vintage Photographs is as fine a coffee table book as you could hope to pick up this year. It follows on the heels of the magnificent Poland in Old Photographs, which was a best-seller last Christmas. For their new number, Bosz has hooked up with Cracow's longstanding Museum of Photography to root out some unusual gems. As before, the album has been divided into sections, focusing on people, events and the city itself.

It's a sumptuous thing that you could spend hours and hours perusing. If we had one criticism it would be that there are perhaps too many plain shots of buildings, as opposed to scenes of life within them. However, all in all, if you have a soft spot for Cracow, you can hardly fail to be charmed by this book.