Book excerpt: Delivering the facts to your fingertips, the Oxford Handbook of Tropical Medicine provides an accessible and comprehensive, signs-and-symptoms-based source of information on medical problems commonly seen in the tropics. A handy guide which can fit in the coat pocket and be used easily at the bedside, it has been designed to be as practical as possible with illustrations of blood films and stool smears, which are useful for diagnosis, as well as clinical features, diagnosis, andmanagement. Medical conditions are ordered by system except for the five major tropical conditions - malaria, HIV/STI.