Mr. Ryan chronicles Church's construction of his home. That home, Olana, is now one of the most popular tourist destinations in the Hudson River Valley; Mr. Ryan is eminently qualified to chronicle it inasmuch as he was the site manager for 20 years. He tells how building the innovative house and shaping its surroundings was the largest work of art Church ever did, and the one that took the longest. The introduction by Franklin Kelly, a curator at the National Gallery of Art, sets the scene by briefly describing the arc of the great artist's career and how it was that he came to spend so much of his life on Olana.  (NYS38, $21.95)