Working with the image of the Indian shaman as Wild Man, Taussig reveals not the magic of the shaman but that of the politicizing fictions creating the effect of the real.

"This extraordinary book . . . will encourage ever more critical and creative explorations."—Fernando Coronil, [I]American Journal of Sociology[/I]

"Taussig has brought a formidable collection of data from arcane literary, journalistic, and biographical sources to bear on . . . questions of evil, torture, and politically institutionalized hatred and terror. His intent is laudable, and much of the book is brilliant, both in its discovery of how particular people perpetrated evil and others interpreted it."—Stehen G. Bunker, Social Science Quarterly

Part autobiographical journal, part social-historical novel, Wild Man tracks Tobias Schneebaum's fascinating and almost epic life story, from his earliest contemplation of homoerotic desire through his life in Peru, Borneo, and beyond. A young man from New York, Schneebaum "disappeared" in 1955 on the eastern slopes of the Andes. He was, in actuality, living for more than a year among the remote Harakhambut people, discovering a way of being that was strange, primitive, and powerfully attractive to him. This longing to find the "wild man" in other cultures—and in himself—eventually led him on an odyssey through South America, India, Tibet, Africa, Borneo, New Guinea, and Southeast Asia. He lived among isolated forest peoples, including headhunters and cannibals, in regions where few, if any, white men had ever been.