“THE MOTOWN ALBUM” Edited by Marianne Partridge <i> St. Martin’s Press ($50)</i>

You don’t go through a family album to find skeletons in the closet, and this pictorial parade doesn’t go out of its way to dig up dirt or cast a light on Motown’s darker side. Fair enough. But even a sanitized history should have more punch than this unfocused, 248-page scrapbook. It’s essentially a picture book, but only a few of the photos are eye-popping, and the overall design is confusing: a foreword by Berry Gordy, a short essay, a long history text, additional information in the captions, a critical discography, typographically awkward excerpts of song lyrics here and there. . . . If the Motown acts had made their records this way, they wouldn’t be having books written about them.