Book excerpt: Bailey & Love's Essential Operations in Hepatobiliary and Pancreatic Surgery provides step-by-step explanations of both the core operations and more complex procedures. Written by acknowledged experts and trainers from around the world, and with abundant diagrams and figures to explain the operative steps, this new resource will enable hepatobiliary and pancreatic surgeons to increase their skills in this demanding and technically challenging field. Over 70 easy-to-read chapters cover the entire range of HPB surgery. Essential management principles and technical points are included, preferred operative techniques are described and alternative options discussed. The practice of HPB surgery requires familiarity and expertise with a wide range of technologies, and these are described and integrated within the text. The text is enhanced by clear colour images, ensuring that best practice in HPB surgery is made clear and accessible for a global audience. As surgical trainees around the world continue to be faced with the reduction in training time, surgical skills need to be increasingly codified so that trainees can reach a high level of proficiency as quickly as possible. This manual ensures that surgeons will be able to access the core information that they need quickly and with ease, and in the process increase their clinical judgement, their experience and their technical skills.