This, in the author's own words, is a book aimed at oat specialists, and summarises 45 years of studies of wild oats and his views on evolutionary issues in the oat genus. It is a part of the ‘Springer Briefs in Agriculture’ series of concise summaries of research and practical applications with a fast turnaround of publication.

The book includes vivid accounts of the discovery, collection and in situ conservation of wild oat species. Ladizinsky makes the case that no known diploid oats can be the progenitors of cultivated oats. By way of practical application, he outlines his 25 years of domesticating the protein – rich tetraploid A. magna and the prospect of producing synthetic hexaploid oats combining A. magna and diploid species. He ends with the question of how many oat cultivars contain valuable genes from wild relatives. This and other sections surely deserved more references to a large literature. Why is there no mention of the classic 1974 monograph, Cytogenetics of Oats by Rajhathy and Thomas?

The book is marred by a large number of typographical errors, and given the title, I am surprised that there is no picture of the author to add to the reader's interest, but otherwise it meets its goal of providing a concise overview of Avena evolution. Possibly, inclusion of the author's work on the Middle East pulses, as described in the preface, could have resulted in a book on crop domestication appealing to a wider audience.