Books: Unerring Eye

PORTRAIT OF MYSELF by Margaret Bourke-White. 383 pages. Simon & Schuster. $5.95.

She barnstormed the great plains in a primitive two-seater plane to photograph the Dust Bowl. She hitchhiked by rowboat to get pictures of the Louisville flood. As the only foreign press photographer in Russia when Hitler attacked, she dodged wardens and bombers to shoot the nightly air raids on Moscow. Her ship was torpedoed out from under her in the invasion of Africa; she was among the first correspondents to photograph Buchenwald; she was the last to interview Gandhi, hours before his assassination. Thus Margaret Bourke-White followed the classic dictum...