The title of the first book was indeed intriguing. As one read the preface it was clear that the author feels that the forestry profession in the period covered in the 19th and 20th century believed in and practised the rational use of resources or in the modernizing of Nature. This is a bit puzzling as 'modernizing' has been associated with new fashioned thought which may of course include the rational use of resources. Yet again, rational use of resources is not one confined to the modern period, though, of course, greater use of scientific tools did inject an element of rationality. But let us not cavil at the title and go on to see what the book is about.   The trigger for what has been presented in the book is that part of Indian environmental history that has tended so far to echo dispossession and inequity in terms of economic history without 'fundamentally questioning modernizing projects' in forestry in different places and times. The use of science in forestry was such that it was not just an imperialist tool but the formulator of an environmental policy which did not always suit the rest of the colonial bureaucracy in countries like India. The effects of European origin of the science employed, their ideological orientation towards nature and indigenous populations and the differences with the rest of the colonial framework are explored in detail in the book. British colonial forestry in its colonies like South Africa and India and the emergence of the Empire Forestry Conference as a peer-pressure mechanism have also been sketched out. The author stresses that in focusing on the development of empire forestry and concentrating on the perspectives of the scientific community, the book has branched off from the existing genre of regional case studies.   In the first part of the book two epochs of colonial British forestry have been covered in the context of European environmental traditions. In the second part, contents of the Empire Forestry Conference are analysed after describing the process leading to these conferences. The role of the imperial forest community and the attitude towards natural resource management focusing on issues such as soil conservation and shifting cultivation folows and the book ends by highlighting the wider implications of colonial eco-development.   The European tradition which focused on the environmental importance of forests stressed the primary importance of forests in water conservation. This is ...