These two books provide histories of STDs and HIV in nine sub-Saharan African countries and another 11 countries in the Asia-Pacific region. The contributors are mostly historians or social scientists and the historical accounts take the reader up to 1995. Each volume is divided up into well referenced scholarly monographs on individual countries and individual chapters will be of considerable interest to anyone with an interest in sexual health in the countries studied. The number of readers of this journal who will want to read both books throughout is likely to be much less, given that these books are fairly specialist medical historical studies written mainly by historians for historians. The decision of the editors to treat each country separately has led …