It is annoying to start a review of an excellent text with a gripe but the book is misnamed, as when it arrived I thought it was on a completely different topic. It is in fact an overdue updating and extension of the book by Ucko and Dimbleby (1969), reviewing the modern associated literature on crop (and some animal) domestication and evolution – perhaps Biodiversity into Agriculture would have been more to the point. With the current interest in food security, it was timely to look again at crop domestication, and the book provides excellent coverage of the subject. The book is split into five sections and 27 chapters that cover Early Steps in Agricultural Domestication, Domestication of Animal and Impacts on Humans, Issues in Plant Domestication, Traditional Approaches to Crop Domestication and the catchall titled Uses of Biodiversity and New and Future Domestication. The chapters are very well written and provide a good overview of the existing literature, with interesting novel chapters on the use of microplant remains to elicit patterns of domestication, dog domestication, gene flow and genetic isolation in rice, participatory domestication and fish domestication. Although another minor quibble would the lack of a real look at patterns of species diversity and areas of domestication, surely it is no coincidence that the Middle East has such a wealth of crop wild relatives and is also the major site of crop domestication. Having said that, I recommend this text to all those interested in agrobiodiversity, domestication and evolution.