NONFICTION - Jan. 5, 1992

NO STONE UNTURNED: The Life and Times of Maggie Kuhn by Maggie Kuhn, with Christina Long and Laura Quinn (Ballantine Books: $18; 232 pp.) . A picture, in this case the cover photograph of Gray Panther leader Maggie Kuhn, is worth more than its standard allotment of a thousand words. The carefully knotted swath of white hair, the elegantly skeptical gaze, the mouth set in a challenging half-smile--this is a woman who has battled this country’s disregard for the elderly without ever losing her composure. Now, with the help of two collaborators, the 86-year-old social activist tells her life story. She was born in Buffalo, N.Y., her mother’s hometown, because her mother refused to give birth in Memphis, Tenn., where she and her husband had relocated. Memphis, with its strict segregationist practices, offended her, as she offended her neighbors there; they shunned her for having the audacity to eat lunch with a black cleaning woman. Margaret Eliza Kuhn was raised to scorn established wisdom--not just the condescension and neglect with which this society treated the aged, but the sexism that dogged her path as an unmarried working woman. If only she’d let a bit more of her fire seep into her prose, which too often reads as though she were describing someone seen at a great distance. Kuhn is full of spunk and courage, and yet her narrative is oddly genteel.