"Taussig offers us a very readable, often amusing and at the same time disconcerting insight into what it means to live in the midst of the paramilitary. . . . This beautifully observed account is given depth by Taussig's three decades' knowledge of the locality. . . . We gain insights into the anthropologist's craft, his need to get under the skin of the social processes he observes, even to the point of endangering himself."
— Jenny Pearce, Latin American Studies
"This is a horrifying and immediate first-person look at globalism's dark side, done with humor, despair, and sympathy."
— Publisher's Weekly
"The diary is a tour de force by an anthropologist whose work has been a sustained exploration of the relationship between language, images, violence, and power. . . . This book seizes the reader and does not let go, testimony both to the terror in which so many Colombians live as well as to the powerful contributions that ethnography can make in conveying the hallucinatory reality in which far too many people are forced to make their way."
— Kimberly Theidon, Journal of Anthropological Research