Loyd also weaves in anecdotes from his personal life, mostly having to do with his struggle with heroin, which becomes his coping mechanism after witnessing some truly disturbing stuff. I don’t mind these sections, since they offer not only a change of pace from the war (albeit only a slightly less depressing one—I don’t recommend reading this book before bed), but also a glimpse into the mind of a person that would voluntarily put their body and mind in harm’s way. Loyd has used a zoom lens to put his readers nose to nose with the surreal and horrifying brutalities [in Bosnia] . . . this book is so powerful that, at times, you will have to put it down. But not for long." -- Denver Post

a b c Anthony Loyd (1 February 2001). My War Gone By, I Miss It So. Penguin (Non-Classics). ISBN 0-14-029854-1. Not your father's front-line reporting. This may just be the flat-on-your-belly grittiest coverage to come out of those tormented killing zones thus far." -- Dallas Morning News You could have a good time in Stara Bila that summer, providing you had not been born in the place. Congregated there were every type and nationality of journalist, photographer, cameraman (...). The fighting spilled further into the hills around us; they glowed with burning villages at night, and echoed with firefights by day. We sometimes watched it over barbecues. At dusk, we would choose our company, load up on whatever was going, and party to excess. We would fade out what the war meant to us and turn up the volume on the generator-run sound system." This is definitely not a book for everybody, but it did satisfy my goal of filling a hole in my historical knowledge, one I’m sure many others have. The lessons learned are important, though sadly not unique. That this happened in my lifetime is sobering evidence that it can easily happen again. Hopefully, with more books like this, that chance will diminish.

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Anthony Loyd (11 February 2005). "I'm more scared of going out with these guys than fighting insurgents". The Times. London . Retrieved 12 September 2007. Anybody else feel a little queasy, like watching two teenagers playing video games only we are talking about human life. I had a hard time liking Loyd. It was too much like the war was there for his entertainment and early on I wondered if I was going to be able to finish this book.

Da viva la ragazza era sorprendentemente carina. Morta, era così bella da indurti ad assoldare un esercito e saccheggiare Troia per averla. The tale is also told as an attempt to get at the psychopathology of war or, putting more as Loyd might, its attractiveness, both as a disposition and as an aquired taste. This he begins to do, and not cheaply. He had such a disposition. He further developed such tastes--along with apparently related tastes for alcohol, heroin and virtually anonymous sex...yet, he does not scrimp on the horror and the injustice of it all. Nor does he avoid the obvious implications of the extremely morbid fascination he, and others, develop for the chaos and destruction of warfare. The book is, in fact, substantially an exploration of this pathology, though no "cure" for that or for his other addictions is ever adduced. If Lloyd had been a damaged soul before going to the Balkans, he was a burned out husk by the time he left. “Everything I had seen and experienced confirmed my views about the pointlessness of existence, the basic brutality of human life and the godlessness of the universe.” Even the presence of UN “peacekeepers” was part of the farce, their leaders apparently chosen from the ranks of the least capable and least imaginative, “He was one of those officers who had risen to a position of authority without ever having the confidence to know when to abandon the book.”for arming and training the Muslims. I believed something fundamental was at stake.'' His disgust at the West's (the United Nations', the world's) inaction was not dispelled by the bombing that There’s a brief detour into Chechnya – the Russian separatist state – during a winter long ceasefire in Bosnia. The war there is a nightmare. They’re shelling the city into oblivion but the rebels are performing miracles. He doesn’t stay long – this isn’t his war. been left in a shed next to three murdered women. The women kneel, sightlessly watching the journalists struggle, in a shallow pit in the floor. It was not necessarily that I had 'found' myself during the war, but the conflict had certainly put a kind of buffer zone between the fault lines in my head. Without it, or any narcotic relief, they ground away with renewed vigour." Tuttavia, questo libro di Anthony Loyd è diverso dagli altri, esce in qualche modo dal coro: è diverso perché è particolare il suo punto di vista e approccio, da ex soldato diventato giornalista, così ‘dentro’ da essere parte di quello che testimonia e racconta.