Hardcover with dust jacket

Illustrations: colour plates

A field biologist since 1972, Craig Packer began his work studying primates at Gombe and then the lions of the Serengeti and the Ngorongoro Crater with his wife and colleague Anne Pusey. Here, he introduces us to the real world of fieldwork -- initiating assistants to lion research in the Serengeti, supervising a doctoral student, collaborating with Jane Goodall on primate research. As in the works of George Schaller and Cynthia Moss, Packer transports us to life in the field. He is addicted to this land -- to the beauty of a male lion striding across the Serengeti plains, to the calls of a chimpanzee through the forests of Gombe -- and to understanding the animals that inhabit it.

Through his vivid narration, we feel the dust and the bumps of the Arusha Road, smell the rosemary in the air at lunchtime on a Serengeti verandah, and hear the lyrics of the Grateful Dead playing off bootlegged tapes. Beyond the sights, the smells, and the glorious beauty of the Serengeti plains, Into Africa also explores the social lives of the animals and the threats to their survival. Packer grapples with questions he has passionately tried to answer for more than two decades. Why do lions live in groups? Why do male baboons move from troop to troop while male chimps band together?' How can humans and animals continue to coexist in a world of diminishing resources? Immediate demands -- logistical nightmares, political upheavals, physical exhaustion -- yield to the larger, inescapable issues of the interdependence of land, animals, and people.

Packer's ability to see ourselves through the insights gained observing other species is part of what fascinates him and his readers. Interwoven throughout the narrative, he writes that it is our human ability to cooperate that transcends anything observed in animals. In a world of diminishing resources, he reminds us that co-operation will determine our fate and that of our ecosystem as well.

CRAIG PACKER is professor in the Department of Ecology, Evolution, and Behavior at the University of Minnesota. The author of more than fifty scientific articles, he has also written for Natural History and National Geographic.

Click here to order on-line . . .

Click here for print-and-fax order form . . .