Rice University: One Hundred Years in Pictures by Karen Hess Rogers, Lee Pecht, and Alan Harris Bath, intro. by John B. Boles (review)

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Karen Hess Rogers, Lee Pecht, and Alan Harris Bath have created an excellent pictorial account of Rice University over the past century. John Boles’s sensitive and perceptive “Introduction,” invites readers into this intriguing book. More than two hundred pages in length, Rice University: One Hundred Years in Pictures is aptly named and beautifully illustrated with Rice University’s Woodson Research Center photos, which portray people, construction, events, buildings, and illustrations. The final product is organized by a color combination of Crayola yellow inserts used for photo illustrations and brief vignettes, and more traditional black and white text for the narrative. Though never clearly articulated, this ingenious feature guides the reader to differentiate between photo illustrations, documents and delimited narrative in yellow pages, and the broader contextual narrative and photographs that connect the “chapters” of the text.

Divided into nine un-numbered segments, the actual narrative loosely links the themes of Rice University in photos: its founding, its opening, the interwar years, World War II, its expansion in the post-war years, its initiatives seeking greater recognition, its 1970s presence, and finally the modern era. This narrative is merely a structural convention to link together a rich and carefully annotated collection of institutional photographs and illustrations. For example, segments entitled “The Trial of the Century,” “How Sammy the Owl Got His Name,” “Literary Societies for Women,” “The Early Years of the Rice Band,” “Hazing,” “The May Fete,” “Protest,” “The Economic Summit,” or “Theater at Rice” will become the pages to which friends and alumni of Rice will repeatedly turn.

Rice makes no pretentions to being a history. The historically curious can turn to “Additional Reading,” which directs readers to historical writings about Rice University, especially those of John B. Boles, Stephen Fox, and Fredericka Meiners. This is a book that is meant to be seen and experienced. At a time when the public often prefers visual images to a narrative, this work illustrates modern notions of historical presentation. The reader will find material that is both interesting and internally sufficient. While typical modern historical accounts of institutions of higher education often struggle to illustrate a brief narrative, this unabashed pictorial account combines superb illustrations with a sparse, self-sufficient discussion of topics that will interest even those unfamiliar with Rice and its distinctive story.

Time spent with Rice is comparable to a museum or archives visit. In this “coffee table book” the casual observer can learn something interesting about Rice. The work will provoke an unexpected smile or maybe even a chuckle, but it will only whet a broader curiosity about the institution that has become one of Texas’s academic treasures. The book is meant to be enjoyed. It is neither pretentious nor prejudiced. For example, its coverage of desegregation places Rice solidly in the middle of Texas integration during the 1960s. Rogers, Pecht, and Bath present Rice University as a place renowned for its accomplishments, but also one that...