Emergency abdominal surgery is a battlefield for the surgeon - providing character-building experiences, and opportunities for triumph and disaster. In the second edition of this simple book, emergency abdominal surgery is discussed in an informal and no nonsense fashion - as practiced in the trenches of the ER and the OR. The preferred approach for a given situation is discussed in context; it has to fulfill certain prerequisites: save life, decrease morbidity, be cost effective and be performed correctly. Reviews of the 1st edition: "What makes this book very readable are the pregnant citations, aphorisms and smart savings, which are often heard at the bedside and operation rooms but almost never reach the pages of a book". (P. Klein, Chirurg, 2000) "This is written with short punchy chapters making it very difficult to put down...." (R.A.B. Wood, Journal Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh, 2000) "Since Mondors times in the forties of the last century there was no other book in surgery to be written so easy and witty... (Boris D. Savchuk, World Journal of Surgery, 2002)