Let me confess to a bias right away: I used to be a stringer for the Associated Press, but don’t do a Google search for my byline because it isn’t there. I was the "quote guy" and marginally helped with stats at Buffalo Bills’ home games for three full seasons and a fraction of a fourth in the mid-90s after the Super Bowl seasons.

But still, if you ever read a quote in an AP story from Buffalo about quarterback Jim Kelly’s audibles with the no-huddle offense, well then I scrambled to find him and get that quote. Likewise, if you read coach Marv Levy say that execution, not schemes, wins ball games, then I executed my way to the podium to get that quote. And call me sentimental, but I saved the tape of Don Shula’s quotes after his last game in Buffalo – a Dolphins’ loss. It was the only tape I ever saved.

So, though I know it’s hyperbole, I like Mark Twain’s quote about the AP (it is on the back cover of the book): "There are only two forces that can carry light to all corners of the globe, the sun in the heavens and The Associated Press down here."

Now that my pro-AP bias is out front, readers can view this review as they wish. Yet I still believe, flashcube for flashcube and pixel for pixel, the AP has the greatest photogs in the world and this book displays the best of the best. The book was put together in 1998, so the recent photos from Sept. 11 and the aftermath of other tragedies around the globe are not here. Yet it does record all the heartache of a firefighter carrying a dead child’s body from the rubble of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City; the glee of Harry Truman holding up that infamous Chicago Daily Tribune headline after the ’48 presidential election; and show the courage of one man blocking a line of tanks in Beijing after the pro-democracy demonstration was crushed in Tiananmen Square.

We’re told that a picture is worth a thousand words. Yet sometimes what is cropped out of a picture – or the picture that wasn’t taken – speaks louder. The AP knows that and covers those bases. A generation of baby boomers remembers the Vietnam War through Pulitzer Prize-winning pictures, few of them as unsettling as the sight of young Phan Thi Kim Phuc running down a road in horror, naked and screaming. Photog Huynh Cong Ut took her picture near Trang Bang, Vietnam, on June 8, 1972, after U.S. planes accidentally dropped napalm on South Vietnamese troops and civilians. Happily, Kim Phuc survived and is now a Canadian citizen. On an early summer day in 1997, the same photographer visited her and took a picture of her playing with her then 3-year-old son. If only all stories ended as joyfully.

AP included about 150 photos from most of the decades of the 20^th century. That collection depicts conflict and joy all around the globe and this book is as moving as our memories. It is truthful and it doesn’t shirk controversial events or people. Although some of the pictures can swell emotions, it is not mawkish. In short, to paraphrase a New York Times book review, it may be among the best photography books of all time. As such, it is useful not only to journalists, but also to journalism students and those interested in the craft.

Joe Marren is an assistant professor in the communication department at Buffalo State College. He was also a newspaper reporter and editor for 18 years. He can be reached at marrenjj@buffalostate.edu