It’s hard for seabirders today to imagine how little truly helpful popular literature existed about the field identification of the tubenoses (highly marine birds of the order Procellariiformes) just a couple of decades ago. Yes, Peter Harrison’s tour de force, Seabirds, An Identification Guide (1983, Houghton Mifflin, Boston), brought the world’s species into our consciousness, even if the painted illustrations sometimes strayed a bit from reality and many aspects of taxonomic and individual variation were not well understood at that time. Onley and Scofield’s Albatrosses, Petrels and Shearwaters (2007, Princeton University Press) incorporated considerable information coming to light in the two decades after Harrison’s guide, but it missed the mark on many details and used only paintings, albeit improved over Harrison’s. Some excellent journal articles have tackled particular identification issues, but Steve Howell’s new tubenose book represents a giant leap forward and one of the best single sources on seabird identification yet published.