Uses an ethnographic example of ritual violence to illuminate cultural expression more widely and thereby reformulate anthropological and historical approaches to warfare and violence.

"Ethnographer Neil L. Whitehead enters this realm of reality and mythology, of storytelling and firsthand experience by accident, and his opening tale sustains the horror-filled storytelling power characteristic of such authors as Bram Stoker and Stephen King. As such, the kanaima, long known to explorers, poets, and ordinary people of northeastern South America, take their place in the history of modernity along with Dracula, Frankenstein, and the Wolf Man."--Norman Whitten, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign