Serre's notes on groups acting on trees have appeared in various forms (all in French) over the past ten years and they have had a profound influence on the development of many areas, for example, the theory of ends of discrete groups. This fine translation is very welcome and I strongly recommend it as an introduction to an important subject. In Chapter I, which is self-contained, the pace is fairly gentle. The author proves the fundamental theorem for the special cases of free groups and tree products before dealing with the (rather difficult) proof of the general case.