This is an important and timely book about arthropods and the diseases they transmit. South America has a significant reservoir of zoonotic and human diseases in which arthropods play a major role in maintaining and transmitting the diseases. It provides a broad coverage of diseases transmitted by arthropods throughout the world while giving specific and vivid examples of problems affecting Brazil as well as the approaches to diagnose and treat them. As rapid travel and tourism increase between Latin America and other countries, it is important to identify the vectors and diseases potentially carried by travelers and foreign tourists. Scientists and medical doctors who do not know Portuguese but who have knowledge of Spanish or Latin could understand the disease presentations if they needed to know potential diagnostic features of patients who recently travelled to Brazil. For Brazilians and other South American researchers and students, this book will be a fresh addition as a reference book.

This book, written in Portuguese and edited by Carlos Brisola Marcondes, presents a very good compendium of subjects related with the whole array of diseases currently known to be transmitted and caused by arthropods. A total of 45 authors from different renowned academic, medical and research institutions mostly throughout Brazil, contribute to make this an important reference material for researchers and mostly for students in the medical, biological and veterinary areas.

The book is divided in three parts with 35 chapters. Part one, Diseases Transmitted by Arthropods, with 19 chapters is further divided in four sections: Arboviruses (Flavivirus, Togavirus, and Bunyavirus); Bacteria (Pests and Tularemia, Rickettsia, Borreliosis, Ehrlichiosis, Anaplasmosis); Protozoa (Leishmaniasis, Chagas Disease, Other Trypanosomiasis, Malaria, Babesiosis, Theileriosis, Hepatozoonosis); and Helminths (Lymphatic Filariasis, Onchocerciasis, Mansonellosis, Dirofilariasis).

Part two, Diseases Caused by Arthropods has 13 chapters that cover the allergies and other reactions caused by hematophagous arthropods, mites such as dust mites and scabies, poisonous lepidopterans, venomous hymenopterans, spiders, scorpions and other irritant arthropods and the diseases caused by flies, lice, fleas and ticks.

Part three, Other Considerations, is composed of two chapters dedicated to the geoprocessing and overview of disease distribution, and the impact of human behavior, epidemiology and disease prophylaxis. With the exception of these last two chapters, the book includes information about the etiology, pathogenesis, pathology, epidemiology, diagnosis, treatment, transmission, control and prevention of the different diseases. There are figures, color pictures, schematic representation of life cycles, tables, maps and a glossary.

Dr. Carlos Brisola Marcondes not only edited this work but wrote the introduction and three chapters. This is not his first book. In 2002 he published Entomologia Médica e Veterinária (Medical and Veterinary Entomology) reviewed in Florida Entomologist 85:403 and, in 2006, Terapia Larval de Lesões de Pele Causadas por Diabetes e Outras Doenças (Larval Therapy of Lesions Caused by Diabetes and Other Diseases).