The relationship of the Kenyan government to the pastoral areas of northern Kenya can be characterised as one of neglect interrupted by interventions which tend to be misconceived or guided by personal interests or the identification of government personnel with one or the other party in the conflict. Government control is not continuous, either in time or in space. Here, violent interaction, in the form of raiding or small-scale warfare, takes place on the fringes of the state or in the shadow of the state, with the state being, at best, one of many actors, rather than representing an effectively implemented overarching order. One can, therefore, compare northern Kenya with the world at large, which is also composed of units (mostly nation states, entities aspiring to such a status or alliances among these units) that are engaged in interactions varying between amity and enmity. This is what Jon Holtzman does in this remarkable book: he compares the rhetoric of escalation and conflict dynamics between the mostly pastoral groups of in northern Kenya, whose populations are counted in the thousands rather than the millions, with wars in the wider world, e.g. with the Iraq war, the World Wars, the violent dissolution of Yugoslavia and other conflicts known to the reader from the news media.

The study is based on years of field research among the Samburu and briefer research visits with a more specific focus on the history of recent conflicts and inter-ethnic attitudes regarding other groups, mainly Pokot and Somali. A possible Samburu bias is acknowledged and controlled to the extent to which this is feasible. Unsurprisingly, Holtzman finds quite different perspectives on the same instances of violence when he interviews enemies or former enemies – in some cases, enemies who know each other very well, because they are former friends. But, mostly, the disagreement is not on the level of facts. People do not have ‘alternative facts’, to cite a famous line from contemporary American politics. They tend to agree on a skeleton of facts; but the events are evaluated according to different criteria, including different ideals of manhood or fortitude and different conceptions of the legitimacy of various forms of warfare – for example, stealth being evaluated alternatively as cleverness or cowardice. Truth remains a relevant category for Holtzman. His observations do not lead him into bottomless relativism, and he distances himself from postmodernism. On the other hand, he still finds it difficult to decide whose interpretation is right; and, often, he has difficulty even to reconstruct precisely what happened. But, talking to the families of victims, who ever have their truth or crave for truth, it is hard to maintain an agnostic stand on the truth. Too easily that might be mistaken for lack of interest in the truth. This is a dilemma for which Holtzman has no solution. If he had one, it would not be a dilemma. Dilemmas are inescapable.

For whom is this book of interest? Let me answer this question in terms of widening circles:

1. 1. It is an important contribution to the ethnography of northern Kenya.

2. 2. Irrespective of the region, it should be read by anthropologists who want to think about basic ethical and methodological problems of their discipline.

3. 3. It can also be recommended to citizens of the world who want to think about warfare and how to stop it.

In the acknowledgements, the cryptic reference to a person called BS should have been spelled out and greatly expanded. But the really bad thing about the book is that it is not by me.