Mirrors - by Eduardo Galeano (Paperback)

About the Book

One of the world's most celebrated writers delivers his most ambitious book to date--an epic history of the human adventure, told backwards, forwards, sideways, through past, present, and future.

Book Synopsis

From one of the world's most celebrated writers, his most ambitious book to date-an epic history of the human adventure, told backwards, forwards, sideways, through past, present, and future

Review Quotes

"Unique...Nothing less than a capsule history of the human race. In some 600 short entries, he travels from prehistory to the present, from the impressionistic to the brutally, precisely documented."

--New York Times Book Review

"A genre-defying work that combines poetry, narrative, fiction, journalism, social analysis, and political opinion to tell the story of all the peoples who have been sacrificed for our progress."--Philadelphia Inquirer

"Eduardo Galeano is a learned historian, a brilliant synthesizer and elegant stylist... Mirrors should increase Galeano's stature in the English-speaking world and enhance his reputation as unclassifiably brilliant."--Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel

"Eduardo Galeano is the galvanizer, firebrand, a writer who tells readers about history that other, more powerful people don't want them to know or understand...His new book, Mirrors, reflects 5,000 years of human experience. But it does so with a keen sense of perspective. For all the past that Galeano captures, this is a writer who lives right now."--Washington Post

"In Mirrors, Galeano regales us with tales from our shared history in an inclusive manner, from cultural creation myths to major historical figures and inventions to significant current events. It is a truism that history is written by the victors; what if, Galeano seems to ask, history were told instead by the vanquished, the oppressed and the downtrodden of all cultures and times? This unpretentiously ambitious book is an answer."--Texas Observer

"It is often said that history is written by the victors, but Galeano has been documenting the losing side--the oppressed, the forgotten, the used--for decades. Neither weary nor desperate, these tales have a tinge of hope...Skip around, read one tiny story here, another a few pages later, and allow the tales to swim around your head a while and see if they change the way you see the world."--NPR

"The elegance of Galeano's words--they're just penetrating, so beautiful. It's a feast of words."--San Francisco Chronicle

About the Author

Eduardo Galeano (1940-2015) was one of Latin America's most distinguished writers. A Uruguayan journalist, writer, and novelist, he is the author of the three-volume Memory of Fire, Open Veins of Latin America, Soccer in Sun and Shadow, and others. Born in Montevideo in 1940, he lived in exile in Argentina and Spain for years before returning to Uruguay.