The Spotted Sphinx is the record of a long association, one still very much alive at the end of the book….

A book by Joy Adamson grabs a reader and holds him. It is of course tremendously moving to see a member of our own species establish a relationship of trust and affection with an animal historically viewed as fearfully savage, an absolute threat to life and limb….

Perhaps not everyone can happily surrender himself to Mrs. Adamson's day-by-day account of the search for one to five elusive cheetahs, of a prolonged succession of meals of freshly slaughtered goat meat, of bouts of worry interspersed with moments of happy play with strong animals who mean no harm but never sheathe their claws….

[There] must be something lacking in anyone who doesn't want to read about Elsa the lioness or Pippa the cheetah.

These are pages that were lived...