For "Talking Heads" (Pointed Leaf Press, $75), Matthew Rolston got up close and personal with the googly-eyed ventriloquist dummies at the Vent Haven Museum in Fort Mitchell, Ky. From their static expressions Rolston somehow teases out startlingly lifelike portraits. In shelter magazines like House Beautiful, Maynard L. Parker (1900-1976) captured the sunny, white-picket-fence optimism of postwar America. "Modern Photography and the American Dream" (Yale University Press, $65) is his first monograph. Peter Moruzzi's "Classic Dining" (Gibbs Smith, $30) is a time capsule of midcentury restaurants, the kinds where every dish had two names: Oysters Rockefeller, Steak Diane, Cherries Jubilee, Bananas Foster.