Beyond Scrapbook

We're not in the habit of reviewing self-published books in this magazine. If a work is good enough to read, why isn't it good enough to find a publisher? Self-publishers Walt Whitman and Virginia Woolf would give you a pretty good answer: if not for do-it-yourself books, a lot of great literature would never have been read.

Then there is the more modest kind of book in which an interesting person publishes a self-portrayal for friends and relatives, and for people who admire that kind of life. Of all the books we have seen in this genre, one stands out for quality and quiet storytelling: Adventures inPhotography by Fred Stockwell '43. Stockwell, a former class president, has taken pictures in the Alps, the Himalayas (including Mt. Everest), the American West, New England, and Florida. He is a competent outdoor photographer, and the book is remarkably well designed and intelligently put together. More important, though, it serves as an excellent specimen of the Dartmouth genus: business success, a singular passion, outdoor rigor. The people who admire this kind of life may find the book a modest guide; those who have lived adventurously themselves might use the book as a model for their own volume a thoughtful exploration of a life well conducted.