WORLD PRESS PHOTO: This Critical Mirror ...

WORLD PRESS PHOTO: This Critical Mirror edited by Stephen Mayes (Thames & Hudson: $29.95; 224 pp., paperback original). This oddly designed album marks the 40th anniversary of the prestigious annual World Press photography contest. Not surprisingly, the winning pictures are dramatic and often horrifying: A vulture watching a starving African child; wars in Vietnam, the Balkans and Kuwait; the ravages of AIDS. An occasional humorous image--photographers mobbing “first cat” Socks or a nun coaching cricket--lightens the tone and makes it bearable.