Leopards and cheetahs embody the wild beauty of Africa. In this spectacular photographic study, the husband-and-wife team of distinguished naturalists Christine and Michel Denis-Hout provides readers with a rare glimpse into the everyday lives of these compelling creatures. Their exceptional photography vividly brings to life the excitement of a young cheetah's first hunt, the languid relaxation of a leopard's midday nap, and the sheer strength and beauty of these glorious big cats in their natural habitat. The cheetah's legendary speed is documented in a series of exceptional photographs, while the leopard's notorious stealth can be felt in depictions of it's sinuous descent from a perch high in a tree. Everyday activities such as courting, grooming, and caring for their young are captured in unprecedented close-ups. The gleaming fangs of a yawning leopard, the intensity of a pouncing cheetah, and the golden grasses of the savannah trampled by a herd of retreating zebra are just some of the evocative sights conveyed in Lords of the Savannah. The lively text provides the latest findings on the habits and habitats of leopards and cheetahs, and expresses the authors' admiration and affection for these animals.

List of members in each volume.

Worlds the Shawnees Made: Migration and Violence in Early America

"A work of dazzling beauty...the rare coming together of historical scholarship and curiosity about distant places with luminous writing." --The New York Times Book Review Since the Turks first shattered the glory of the French crusaders in 1396, the Ottoman Empire has exerted a long, strong pull on Western minds. For six hundred years, the Empire swelled and declined. Islamic, martial, civilized, and tolerant, in three centuries it advanced from the dusty foothills of Anatolia to rule on the Danube and the Nile; at the Empire's height, Indian rajahs and the kings of France beseeched its aid. For the next three hundred years the Empire seemed ready to collapse, a prodigy of survival and decay. Early in the twentieth century it fell. In this dazzling evocation of its power, Jason Goodwin explores how the Ottomans rose and how, against all odds, they lingered on. In the process he unfolds a sequence of mysteries, triumphs, treasures, and terrors unknown to most American readers. This was a place where pillows spoke and birds were fed in the snow; where time itself unfolded at a different rate and clocks were banned; where sounds were different, and even the hyacinths too strong to sniff. Dramatic and passionate, comic and gruesome, Lords of the Horizons is a history, a travel book, and a vision of a lost world all in one.