In the first issue of 2015 we devoted the whole of the NBC to a single publication, Springer's massive Encyclopedia of global archaeology, edited by Claire Smith. The appearance of another blockbusting set of volumes of global remit, authored by a cast of prominent scholars, demands similar attention. The three-volume Cambridge world prehistory, however, adopts a rather different format to the Encyclopedia and this has encouraged us to seek some specialist insight. This issue's NBC therefore takes the form of three parallel reviews—one dedicated to each regional volume—by reviewers invited on the basis of their regional expertise.