cover image One Earth: Photographed by More Than 80 of the World's Leading Photojournalists

One Earth: Photographed by More Than 80 of the World's Leading Photojournalists

Kenneth Brower. Collins Publishers, $24.95 (192pp) ISBN 978-0-00-215730-8

While the cause espoused in g this book--the health of our planet--is certainly a good one, the 80 photojournalists whose work is unveiled here turn in images ranging from inspiring to schlocky. In the latter category is an inevitable melting sunset in pink and purple tones (over Mono Lake, Calif., where ``decades of water diversion by Los Angeles is killing or dispossessing the ducks, gulls and shore birds of one of the most remarkable desert ecosystems known''); in the former, a bald eagle, hurt by the Valdez oil spill, takes a sprightly recuperative walk at the Arctic Animal Hospital in Anchorage, Alaska. Accompanying each picture of a place or species currently endangered or thriving at the mercy of humans is a paragraph or two detailing the phenomenon and its story. The scope of the project is emphatically international, encompassing rhinoceroses in Nepal (viewed by respectful ``eco-tourists'' who avoid doing harm to the animals' habitat); an Indian reservation in Washington State that environmental writer Brower contends has been carelessly deforested; and Copsa Mica, Romania, a heavily polluted industrial city ironically designed as a model of its kind. Author tour. (Oct.)