CDC Yellow Book

The CDC (Center for Disease Control and Prevention) has released the latest edition of its famous "Yellow Book", the comprehensive guide to "Health Information For International Travel." Named for its yellow cover, the 2005-2006 edition was the first to be available in bookstores in all its gory glory. And you can also read much of it online. One way or the other, get all the facts on vaccinations, mad dogs, plague or lowly sunburn before you travel.

Gridksipper.com says of CDC's Yellow Book: "It's not just dry reading about what vaccination paperwork you have to take into every country worldwide; there's also salacious detail on what repulsive disfigurements you can expect from invincible jungle disease, animal attacks, or undergoing brain surgery at the hands of a witch doctor."

Ah - okay. Face it, world travelers: you do need to know what kind of worms want to crawl into your orifices in South American rivers and how to find health care abroad. The Center for Disease Control and Prevention's Yellow Book gives you the skinny on every imaginable horrifying sickness possibility (and some you never imagined) and prevention thereof (including NONE), where you can pick up appalling bugs and vicious viruses, and observations regarding hitherto seemingly simple travel stuff like flying: "discomfort" (think abject agony) from sinus infections and "abdominal bloating" (think uncontrollable farting and general seatmate malcontent).

Hypochondriac handbook or practical health and safety guidebook? Both. Curl up with CDC's Yellow Book for some fascinating fireside reading with this in mind: take what you need to know and then set this aside in favor of books like Party Europe (although you might also want to check out the Yellow Book's section on sexually transmitted diseases...ahem) or other less intense guidebooks.

"Stop worrying about the potholes in the road and enjoy the journey."
--Babs Hoffman