If it is to present its subject matter coherently a textbook must have a point of view. The perspective of this book is that an adequate appreciation of landform genesis must encompass a knowledge of the large-scale framework of landscapes as well as an understanding of the smaller-scale processes which create individual landforms. An emphasis on small-scale surface processes and their associated landforms has been pervasive in geomorphology since the 1960s, to the point where the larger- scale aspects of landform genesis, and in particular the role of internal mechanisms in influencing the development of major morphological features, have come to be regarded as almost incidental to the main thrust of research in the subject.