Ten years ago, over the course of several months, I began carting home from the library magazines that patrons had left for other readers to enjoy. The boxes were weighted down primarily with copies of National Geographic, and I soon amassed not only every issue since 1955, but also a sporadic sampling dating back to the late 1920s.
Little did I know then that all my back-breaking hauling would be for naught, that within a decade I would be able to balance on one finger - courtesy DVD-ROM - the entire canon of what the celebrated magazine's publisher, the National Geographic Society, calls "The Diary of a Planet."
The Complete National Geographic: 109 Years of National Geographic Magazine apportions the periodical's 190,000 cumulative pages among four discs. Access options include the Cover Gallery (which posts arrays of thumbnail covers), the Contents menu, the search engine, and the article index. The menubar also links to the society's Web site, and any article on the disc set can be printed in color or black and white at the click of a button.
National Geographic has doggedly chronicled the indefatigable march of our civilization through the 20th century, and an expedition through its 9,300-plus articles, from the dry, scholarly reports of the early years to the vivid accounts by today's globe-hopping correspondents, reveals how the magazine reflects our evolving attitudes, prejudices, and perspectives - and measures how far we have come in little more than a hundred years.
A sampling from 1899 includes "Colonial Systems of the World," "How Long a Whale May Carry a Harpoon," "Plans for Reaching the South Pole," and several pieces on the proposed Nicaraguan Canal Route (later abandoned in favor of a certain project in Panama).
I've read only a smattering of my hundreds of analog back issues, and, barring any extended convalescence, I probably won't be rifling the dusty stacks of boxes and thumbing through many more. But now, with the pocket edition of this venerable, authoritative icon of discovery and wonder, I've got the world at my fingertips.
The Complete National Geographic: 109 Years of National Geographic Magazine: $199.95. Mindscape: +1 (415) 895 2000, www.mindscape.com.
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