n  'In the afternoon we played football and though I played better they got a sneaky goal past me. That night Alberto woke me with an acute stomach pain, which later was located in the right iliac cavity; I was too exhausted to preoccupy myself with someone else’s strange aches so I advised him to resign himself to the pain, turned over and slept through till the next day.'

'Often we realise how mistaken we were in concepts we knew so well; they had become part of us and, automatically, of our consciousness. Every so often we ought to change all our concepts, not just general, social or philosophical concepts, but also, at times, our medical concepts. We will see that diseases are not always treated as one treats illness in a big-city hospital. We will see then that the doctor also has to be a farmer, that he or she has to learn to cultivate new foods and, by his or her example, to cultivate the desire to consume new foods, to diversify the food structure in Cuba – so small and so poor in an agricultural country that is potentially the richest on earth. We will then see that under such circumstances we will have to be quite pedagogic, at times very pedagogic, that we will also have to be politicians; that the first thing we will have to do is not go offering our wisdom, but showing that we are ready to learn with the people, to carry out that great and beautiful common experience – to build a new -'n

This is a first-hand account of Ernesto "Che" Guevara's trip across South America with his good friend. Guevara is not a professional writer and it shows in his straight-forward delivery of the material. It's a diary and it reads like a diary. There is very little exposition here. It's just a blow-by-blow account of the events that took place.

What I found interesting was that Che was a passionate medical student who just wanted to help people, quite in contrast to his later guerrilla life with Castro. It's amazing that such a caring, gentle person would go on to become such a vicious individual.

I guess that's part of the enigmatic personality that has kept Che Guevara on people's minds for the past 50 years. I just wish all those Hot Topic kids would learn about the man behind that iconic image on their t-shirt. Some of them might not be so quick to wear those shirts in public anymore when they find out what a incompetent butcher he became in Castro's Cuba.

Although it took me almost a month to read this relatively short book, I found it very interresting and written in a literary reflective style. It made me wish my journal sounded as coherent and intelligent. The Diary did a great job expressing the feelings and thoughts of a young man who changed from his journey through Latin America. It was really cool to get into the young Che's head and see how, why, and when he began to change into the revolutionary icon so many of us know him as today. Since this is a diary, it reads as one, and the events that create an overarching continuous story are loosely held together. However, where this lacks in story, the Diary makes up for in the analytical, internal musings of Che's mind.