The success of the first edition of Academic Writing for Graduate Students can be attributed to the fact that it filled a particular niche: the need for a book on L2 writing in English in university settings that actually took language seriously. This second edition builds on the first, in that it maintains the useful focus on discourse and genre, exploring the types of organization and characteristic functions found in academic texts. But within these parameters, the book has also been thoroughly revised, the range of sample texts has been updated and broadened in scope, and ongoing changes in the nature of academic writing for graduate students have been taken into account. I shall begin this review by outlining the aims and contents of this new edition of the book, then move on to an evaluation against the broad panorama of L2 writing research.