From Botswana to the Bering Sea: My Thirty Years With National Geographic

National Geographic has been called a window on the world and a passport to adventure. Each month an estimated forty million people in 190 countries open its pages and are transported to exotic realms that delight the eye and mind. Such widespread renown gives the magazine's writers an almost magical access to people and happenings, as doors that are closed to the rest of the journalistic world open wide.

Thomas Y. Canby was fortunate to be a NationalGeographic writer and science editor fr...