Your World: A Photographic Kaleidoscope

This visually arresting but unsystematic collection of more than 200 mostly color photographs was culled from an international photographic competition held to coincide with the Earth Summit and the 20th anniversary of the United Nations Environment Program (to which all the book's royalties will be given). There are images of stunning beauty, like a polar bear silhouetted in evening light, a perfect wave at full froth and a field of flowers worthy of Monet. And there are images of warning: an inexorably deforested hillside, a starving African, a couple nuzzling on a beach strewn with cans. However, the book suffers from a lack of order in the flood of images. Captions with titles and the name and origin of the photographer appear at the end of the book; because we don't learn the locations of the photographs, this compendium from all corners of the earth loses the power of specificity. Chernushenko, a physicist responsible for the clean-up around the Chernobyl nuclear plant, offers a sobering afterword about the need for environmental safety. $25,000 ad/promo. (Apr.)