A federal civil appeal is not a second trial — it is a proceeding to correct legal error in a closed record, governed by rules that punish the unprepared long before anyone reaches the merits. This guide walks the whole arc, beginning with appellate jurisdiction and the final-judgment rule of 28 U.S.C. § 1291 and the narrow escape hatches around it: Rule 54(b) certification, § 1292(a)(1) injunction appeals, § 1292(b) certified questions, the collateral-order doctrine of Cohen v. Beneficial Industrial Loan Corp., and mandamus under the All Writs Act. It then takes up the notice of appeal and the jurisdictional 30/60-day clock of 28 U.S.C. § 2107 — including the Rule 4(a)(4) tolling motions that quietly reset it and the lesson of Bowles v. Russell, that no judge and no equity can save a late appeal. It explains preservation of error and the difference between forfeiture (reviewed, if at all, for plain error) and waiver (not reviewed at all), the Rule 50(b) sufficiency trap of Unitherm and Ortiz v. Jordan, and the limit Dupree v. Younger placed on it. It works through the standards of review — de novo, clear error under Anderson v. City of Bessemer City, abuse of discretion under Pierce v. Underwood, and substantial evidence — which decide more appeals than any rule of substantive law. It closes with the record and appendix, brief writing and oral argument, harmless error and the appellant's burden to show prejudice, the mandate and law of the case, rehearing en banc, certiorari, and fees and costs on appeal. A running hypothetical follows one appellant challenging both a summary judgment and an evidentiary ruling from a single final judgment.