Hinkel's ambitious tome is the newest addition to handbooks in the field of applied linguistics. The volume is composed of eight sections: “Important Social Contexts in Research on Second Language Teaching and Learning,” “Methods in Second Language Research,” “Applied Linguistics and Second Language Research,” “Second Language Processes and Development,” “Methods and Curricula in Second Language Teaching,” “Second Language Testing and Assessment,” “Identity, Culture, and Critical Pedagogy in Second Language Learning and Teaching,” and “Language Planning and Policy and Language Rights.” Each section includes an introduction and 3–12 chapters written by researchers who are well known in their respective areas.

In the introduction, Hinkel acknowledges that the handbook covers a broad range of topics and is directed at a broad group of people. She has most definitely gone for breadth over depth, rightly pointing out the expanding diversity of topics and approaches to second language (L2) learning and teaching. Yet she even includes a list in the introduction of what is not included, such as issues in the hiring of nonnative speaker English as a second language (ESL) teachers and L2 learning by the deaf.

Because space limitations prevent me from reviewing all 57 chapters, I have chosen to focus on chapters that represent one of each of the following: an area in which I am well versed (“Taking Stock of Research and Pedagogy in L2 Writing” by Hedgcock), an area about which I know very little (“Language-in-Education Policy and Planning” by Baldauf and Kaplan), and a topic that I would cover in an introductory L2 teaching methods class (“L2 Listening” by Rost). This sampling allows me to read the chapters from three different perspectives.

Hedgcock's chapter touches upon most of the important issues in the field of L2 writing, which is quite difficult to do in 13.5 pages of text, given—as Hedgcock points out—the diversity of the field in terms of “goals, knowledge sources, and methods of inquiry” (p. 597). He begins by saying that the chapter will explore the major themes of the L2 writer, L2 writers' texts, contexts for L2 writing, and the interaction among these components. His coverage of these issues is not even, however; he devotes a great deal of space to the socioeducational context of L2 writing, discussing only contrastive rhetoric under the theme of L2 writers' texts. However, considering that no two L2 writing researchers would write this chapter in the same way, Hedgcock should be commended for condensing such a diverse field into a short chapter.

As an outsider to the field of language planning and policy, I found Kaplan and Baldauf's chapter on language-in-education planning, which uses Japan, Sweden, and North Korea as examples, to be quite interesting. The chapter gave me what seems to be an overview of the important issues in the field as well as a rare look at language policy in North Korea. The discussion of North Korea, for obvious reasons, is not as well referenced as the discussions of Japan and Sweden, with one exception being references to the writings of Kim Il Sung himself, and so it is unclear where some of the facts were obtained.

Rost's chapter presents a comprehensive overview of what is involved in L2 listening, with references to pedagogical tasks that can help learners at various levels of processing (e.g., word recognition, inferencing). I found the chapter to be outstanding because it clearly summarizes a huge body of literature without losing sight of the practical implications of the research. I approached the chapter from the point of view of a reading that I might assign in my graduate-level language teaching methods class and concluded that I would very much want my students to read the chapter despite the fact that they would need help understanding some of the research that Rost discusses. This chapter on L2 listening, in my opinion, was more comprehensive than the chapter on L2 writing, perhaps because it was a third longer than the Hedgcock chapter.

This handbook serves as a useful overview of a wide variety of topics related to L2 learning and teaching. Given the scope, it might seem overly critical to mention any omissions, but a chapter on foreign language instruction in the United States would have been helpful because eight out of nine chapters in Part 1 focus on English. Hinkel states that the intended audience includes researchers and teacher education faculty, graduate students, teachers and teacher trainees, and curriculum and materials developers, and I do believe that this volume is useful for any L2 teacher educator to have, but less so for language teachers. A more pragmatic issue is whether one might want to require this volume for any particular graduate course. Most likely, the coverage is too broad for any one class, and even the best chapters lack enough detail to use as the only reading on a particular topic. At $100 for the paper version, I would not want to require my students to buy this volume because of the short time in which such state-of-the-art overviews go out of date, but I would it include it as recommended reading.