The book has been coveredi with contact, and apart from a neat ownership signature on the frontb end paper is immaculate. ix 320 pages. Contents: 1. Introduction and background 2. Plant strategies, models, and successional change: a resource-response perspective 3. Community composition and trends of dominance and diversity in successional ecosystems 4. The environment of successional plants: disentangling causes and consequences 5. Recruitment in successional habitats: general trends and specific differences 6. How do plants interact with each other? 7. Plant-plant interactions and successional change 8. Interaction and the evolution of response breadths and niches 9. Ecological and genetic variation in early-successional plants 10. Coping with a variable environment: habitat selection and response flexibility 11. Physiological trends of successional plants 12. Crossing the scales: can we predict community composition from individual species response? 13. From fields to forests: forest dynamics and regeneration in a changing environment. 14. Succession and global change: will there be a shift towards more early-successional systems?