In the past few years, environmental history has gained visibility in Colombian academic circles. Germán Palacio, editor of Historia ambiental de Bogotá y la Sabana, 1850 – 2005, is one of the researchers who have contributed most to the development of this field. The articles in this book are part of a research project that started in the 1990s when Palacio and his team began looking at changes in landscapes and territories in Colombia since 1850. Methodologically, the period of study was divided into three subperiods: 1850 – 1920, reappropriation of nature; 1920 – 70, modernization of nature; and 1970 – present; as a result of the emergence of the environmental discourse and its impacts on natural resource management, Palacio calls this last subperiod the environmentalization of nature. The authors in this volume use this periodization to undertake the study of Bogotá and its relation to the surrounding plain. The book includes a preface and eight articles by different authors that look at different aspects of this relationship. Some of the chapters deal with the development of the city, while others describe and analyze environmental changes in the rural landscape of Bogotá’s surrounding plain. Some of the articles go even further and explore how Bogota’s footprint has grown since the late nineteenth century through agriculture and urbanization that established links among the city, the surrounding plain, the slopes of the Eastern Cordillera and the tropical lowlands of the Magdalena River.The authors, whose backgrounds include economics, philosophy, biology, architecture, history, and law, use a wide variety of approaches. This results in a volume with different writing and argumentative styles and differing points of view that provide a rich and undisciplined understanding of the environmental history of the study area. All the articles explicitly link different dimensions (social, economic, political, institutional, and environmental) and spatial and temporal scales in a coherent analysis of environmental change in the Bogotá plain. This relational perspective provides a suitable framework for interpreting and analyzing the society-nature relationship in the period of study and also gives important information on the increasing imbalance between environmental endowments and resource use. The rate of change has accelerated since 1850, resulting in environmental degradation as a result of poor management decisions that do not necessarily take into account the links among dimensions and scales. It is interesting to mention that most chapters acknowledge the fact that, although Colombia gained independence in 1819, little changed in the city and its surrounding area until well into the second half of the nineteenth century. In other words, colonial management of resources prevailed well into republican times. The articles also look at how the perception of ideal cities and countrysides has changed since colonial times and how this is reflected both in urban and rural environments.The essays provide an important contribution in the field of environmental history of the Bogotá plain. While the diversity of approaches was highlighted as one of the advantages of this compilation, it is also one of the disadvantages. Although all chapters are suitable for a general public, some of them are not necessarily intended for an academic audience and as a result, they lack the rigor required for an academic piece. In these articles, facts are not adequately supported and, in many instances, the sources may not be clear. This book is conceived with a Colombian public in mind. It is assumed that the reader knows Bogotá and its surrounding area well. Although there are maps of the area in some articles, they are not used to contextualize the reader. The contribution of this book could go further if it included an introductory chapter with a brief but adequate geographical and historical contextualization of the study area. Additionally, there is no clear thread in the articles. Although grouped by geographical topic, there is no indication of the reasons behind the ordering of the pieces. Each essay is conceived as an independent piece; therefore some are repetitive in aspects such as a description of the study area. The article about the natural setting of the Bogotá plain is full of relevant data but with very little analysis and elaboration. The reader without knowledge of the area or basic knowledge on geology or biology may find this piece very difficult to tackle and quite useless. Finally, it would have been extremely useful to have a concluding piece where the editor highlights the main points of the articles.This book represents another step toward nurturing the field of environmental history in Colombia consistent with current trends in the field (such as interdisciplinarity). Like any good research product, it leaves the reader with more questions than answers and suggests many topics for researchers interested in Colombian environmental history.