Africa is home to what is arguably the most enigmatic extant mammalian fauna of the world, and the southern region of the continent exemplifies this biota. Some mammalian families found in this region are among the most diverse on the planet, with bovids being a spectacular example. Containing every order of mammal recorded on the continent, southern Africa is diverse in habitats, and the result is a complex set of environments that have given rise to the beauty that is southern African mammals. In 1983 R. H. N. Smithers produced a wonderful book documenting this unique fauna, and thereby setting the bar for other books written to document the natural history of regional faunas. The book has been revised twice: once in 1990 by John D. Skinner and Smithers (who died before the completion of the revision) and again in 2005 by Skinner and Christian Chimimba. As the pace of biological research has increased recently in southern Africa, the need to update our view of the fauna there has become more pressing. Our understanding of the natural history and evolutionary history of mammals in the southern part of the continent has recently expanded enormously thanks to the elegant works of scientists such as G. N. Bronner, N. C. Bennett, C. T. Chimimba, F. P. D. Cotterill, C. A. Matthee, T. J. Robinson, P. J. Taylor, and others. The region has a wide array of keen and observant mammalogists that are critically studying the behavior, ecology, systematics, and conservation of the entire gamut of Mammalia. As a result of such productivity the need to update books such as this one are pressing, and such revisions rapidly become out of date after completion. Against this backdrop, Skinner and Chimimba, with the assistance of a wide variety of subeditors, have revised and updated Smithers’ initial tome. The result bears the same standard usefulness that Smithers gave us, but with a wide variety of additional data. The color maps in the Explanatory Notes are a nice improvement from the second edition. Dr. C. K. Brain summarizes the life and work of Reay H. N. Smithers, paying tribute to a truly J Mammal Evol (2008) 15:67–69 DOI 10.1007/s10914-007-9056-4