Laughs, Music, Art, And Horses.

(From BusinessWeek)

In a department store hung with holiday garlands, a man in an overcoat anxiously leans toward a young woman sitting behind a desk marked ``Gift Counselor'' and asks: ``What do you recommend for someone who wants a mink coat?'' If you're facing gift-giving quandaries of your own, the book that contains this 1950 cartoon is among the new crop of coffee-table tomes you might want to give someone on your holiday list. The Complete Cartoons of The New Yorker (Black Dog & Leventhal Publishers, $60) reproduces every witty illustration published in the magazine since its launch in 1925 -- 2,500 of them in the book's 656 pages and all 68,647 more on two computer disks tucked inside the front cover. It's a compelling social history, with legendary cartoonists such as James Thurber and Peter Arno poking fun at everything from war and the …