This is the tenth volume in the Springer Landscape Series, the purpose of which is to provide a forum for dealing with the complexity of landscapes worldwide. As the foreword acknowledges, this volume represents a departure from previous volumes by shifting from a focus on deforestation to a broader view of regrowth, reforestation, or afforestation. As with many multi-authored volumes such as this, the first and last chapters have been reserved by the editors to place a context for the volume and provide some wrap-up conclusions. As is not uncommon, this book takes what I often refer to as the ‘‘funnel approach’’, in as much as the beginning few chapters lay out broad principles and establish the framework, followed by regional studies of reforestation in complex landscapes, and finishing up with specific case studies of defined landscapes. All in all, there are 16 chapters (each with its own literature cited), 367 pages of text, a 9 page index, and 18 pages of high quality color plates at the end. I approached this book with high hopes for a variety of reasons, but mostly because as a forest ecologist I am broadly aware of the global problem of deforestation and its consequences. Problems surrounding deforestation have been reported extensively in the literature and popular press for decades. Much less attention has been paid to the other side of that coin; i.e., what follows 10 or 20 years after a rainforest has been cut? What about secondary succession (or Forest Transition Theory as the editors refer to it) and the landscape consequences? Many fewer studies have reported on this, with a near absence in the popular press. Certainly, there are large portions of the world that have been deforested unsustainably and certain ecosystems and landscapes have been biologically impacted for centuries into the future. But, how will regrowth affect ‘‘ecosystem services, protected areas, social institutions, economic transitions, remediation of environmental problems, conservation, land abandonment, and both micro and macro level drivers of forest regrowth’’? These are the subjects of this volume, spread across multiple continents. Thus, those working in a variety of research areas (biological, physical, geographic, social, etc.) should find something interesting here. As the editors conclude in the first chapter, ‘‘this book represents one of the first large scale efforts to provide an interdisciplinary, cross-country, multi-scalar perspective on reforestation that includes an integration of theoretical perspectives with empirical analyses from many parts of the world.’’ Certainly a tall order. The second chapter establishes a basic conceptual model (which looks quite similar to secondary forest succession to me) and suggests that there is considerable uncertainty surrounding the trajectory of longterm changes in pan-tropical forests. Using available data from Forest Resource Assessments (FRA) of the B. C. McCarthy (&) Ohio University, Athens, OH 45701, USA e-mail: mccarthy@ohio.edu