Book excerpt: For several decades Peter Friend has been one of the leading figures in sedimentary geology and throughout that time he has helped scores of other people by supervising doctoral students, collaborating with colleagues, especially in developing countries, and selflessly sharing ideas with fellow geologists. This collection of papers is a survey of the research frontier in basin dynamics, a field Peter Friend helped initiate, and a token of thanks from people who have benefited from an association with Peter during their careers. The papers in this book fall into four themes - Tectonics and sedimentation, Landscape evolution and provenance, Depositional systems and Fluvial sedimentation - which reflect Peter's research interests and are all important areas of current research in sedimentary geology. There are both case studies and review articles on these themes which reflect recent work, but the collection can also be considered to be a 'sampler' of sedimentary geology for anyone with broad interests in the Earth sciences.