Performing a surgical operation must be one of the most complex motor tasks undertaken by humans. To the student rotating on a third-year clerkship, or to the resident beginning a surgical career, the complexity can no doubt be daunting. It is the goal of this handbook to try to bring some degree of order to the complexity, focusing on many of the common operations in general, plastic, thoracic, and vascular surgery, and in organ transplantation. We have done so by dividing each procedure into specific and well-defined steps.