If there’s a cruise in your future, you probably should pack Luxury Liners: Life on Board , by Catherine Donzel (Vendome Press, 240 pages, $50.00). The coffeetable-size book, following a chronology of embarkation to arrival, is filled with striking photos and memorabilia of the great ships—the Queen Mary , the Ile de France , the France of 1962, and dozens more.

 

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If there’s a cruise in your future, you probably should pack Luxury Liners: Life on Board , by Catherine Donzel (Vendome Press, 240 pages, $50.00). The coffeetable-size book, following a chronology of embarkation to arrival, is filled with striking photos and memorabilia of the great ships—the Queen Mary , the Ile de France , the France of 1962, and dozens more. The large format brings you close enough to stand at the De Grasse ’s pool-side bar in 1940, settle back to enjoy teatime on the Liberté , and imagine the beads that formed on the chilled silver champagne bucket from the fabled Normandie . Many of the images are beautifully reproduced in sepia, the tint of memory.

Then, even if your ocean voyage doesn’t turn out to be quite like these— and it won’t—the pictures that have seeped into your brain will help shape a very pleasant reality.