Hunting With the Moon: The Lions of Savuti

              The husband-and-wife team of Dereck and Beverly Joubert, creators of eight acclaimed wildlife documentaries, here turn their patient attention to the habits of the lions who inhabit the southern African Republic of Botswana. Filled with sumptuous photographs by Beverly and poetic text by Dereck, Hunting with the Moon is both a sensitive chronicle of the rise and fall of several majestic lion prides—both their nocturnal hunts and their daytime slumber—and an impassioned brief against the killing of these highly prized trophies.

              The Jourberts have come to believe that each lion possesses a unique personality and can feel the equivalent of compassion, fear, sadness, hatred and anger. There is the lioness who ministers tenderly to her dying cub, a lion who specializes in hyena hunting, the touching respect one pride accords a wizened elder. After more than a decade spent living alongside the lions, the Jouberts have paid eloquent tribute to these fearsome and beautiful animals. (National Geographic Soceity, $40).