As with many posthumous books, one wonders if the writer planned some of the necessary revising. The book is both a combination of memoir and book review of Herodotus's Histories. Kapuscinski clearly self-identifies with Herodotus: thinking about how the ancient author was a predecessor as a reporter, travelling vast distances to hear from people their own tales, and then recording it along with his own assessment of the credibility.returnreturnKapuscinski devotes large portions of the book to simply retelling what Herodotus told, and this is less interesting. Every once in a while, though, he does something: he asks of the text probing questions, of the sort he would ask if he were doing the reporting. The result, though, is to undermine the credibility of the same text he is praising to the heavens.