Mirrors: Stories of Almost Everyone,   ISBN:9781568584232

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This is one of the most important books you might ever (should) read. Galeano's writing is always poetic, sometimes acerbic, and definitely incisive. The author really does include "stories of almost everyone" from India to Paraguay and effortlessly melds past and present into a spectacular whole. I can virtually guarantee you will learn something new in reading this (and probably learn many new things). Some passages can be very hard to get through but they are all more than worth it. If this is your first reading of this author it might take a little while to get used to it but please stick through it, you will be rewarded. This is essential reading, a book of ferocity, subtlety, revolution, rage, redemption, learning, and virtually everything else...Read this book, tell others, and then read something else of his (I heartily recommend the Memory of Fire of trilogy). This book is transformative, be prepared and then jump in feet first.

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What a wonderful and different read this book is! In small snippets written beautifully in lucid and poetic language, Galeano, brings together our universal but divergent cultural history under one banner. Each piece is an alternative history; a different perspective; one that gives voice to the voiceless. Don't expect to read it in a few sittings. I keep my copy of this book on my nightstand and read a little at a time, letting each idea in each piece simmer before moving on to more.

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For those of you of European American ancestry, don't waste your time nor money. Galeano has laid down here the "proof" of the world's woes, all due to the evil insane machinations of the Europeans and the New World colonizers. And he accomplishes this with an occasionally inaccurate, snied,and contextually misleading irreverence worthy of any great propagandist. After pages of being beaten over the head with biased historical moments, entirely devoid of context and told from the lofty perch of a modern cynic, as if history can be judged thus, this reader gave up trying to find the tales of Pre-Columbian monstrosities we now do know the Aztecs and Maya and other New World people carried out in accord with the dictates of their own ridiculous superstitions. Galeano claims Alexander the Great killed his entire family. Unless I am mistaken that has never been proven. His treatment of the Chinese is coddling by comparison for his open disgust with Catholics, as if Ghengis Khan hadn't dabbled in cannibalism and genocide. In all this was a disappointment.

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Beautiful stores. No real narrative line, but it doesn't need one. Beautiful assessment of humankind from a unique perspective. Provocative and inspirational.

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Not a typical linear format, no plot, no resolution. Transcends time and space. Not even a story, but a series of very short narratives, usually only a few paragraphs long, that when linked together create a richly accurate collage of forgotten history.

As the title implies, it's like shards of glass when your nose is in the book, glimmers of light, sometimes you may even cut yourself in learning something new, but when you stand back and look at the whole thing, you see yourself, and what it's taken to get you here. It's a very compelling and unique way to convey a message... and I think, an overall message that needs to get out and deserves to be heard. If for no other reason other than it's been suppressed and squashed and ignored. And it's a part of everyone Human.