I have not seen the program of which this book supplements but that is not truly necessary to enjoy the book. The book was absolutely beautiful and I could not help smiling at many of the photographs. The photos of the elephants and zebras were especially beautiful, but so too were the crabs (could not help but smile at those) and whale sharks. In other words: they were all wonderful. The analysis for individual migrations included in the book were a bit more generalized than I would have liked but were about what I expected for the audience they were trying to reach. Some of the generalizations, however, could be misleading. One that annoyed me a bit was the innocent statement regarding how much a sperm whale consumes in a year. The book states that it is equal to the amount fisheries around the globe catch. This small bit of knowledge could be used to wreak havoc by individuals who would use such information as a reason to hunt these whales, claiming they are "stealing their fish". Sounds crazy but this is often the complaint and/or reason given by individuals/corporations/nations for hunting cetaceans. It would have been more thoughtful of National Geographic to include information about human overfishing, illegal fishing and other such issues to balance it out.
I liked that NG included some vital information regarding the need to preserve land so the species included in the book are not lost due to human encroachment. However, they could have included more information like this as just showing people beautiful photos and discussing their migrations may not be enough of an impetus to make individuals want to preserve nature.