Mirrors: Stories of Almost Everyone [Hardcover]

Eduardo Galeano (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: May 26, 2009

Throughout his career, Eduardo Galeano has turned our understanding of history and reality on its head. Isabelle Allende said his works “invade the reader’s mind, to persuade him or her to surrender to the charm of his writing and power of his idealism.”

Mirrors, Galeano’s most ambitious project since Memory of Fire, is an unofficial history of the world seen through history’s unseen, unheard, and forgotten. As Galeano notes: “Official history has it that Vasco Núñez de Balboa was the first man to see, from a summit in Panama, the two oceans at once. Were the people who lived there blind??”

Recalling the lives of artists, writers, gods, and visionaries, from the Garden of Eden to twenty-first-century New York, of the black slaves who built the White House and the women erased by men’s fears, and told in hundreds of kaleidoscopic vignettes, Mirrors is a magic mosaic of our humanity.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Starred Review. The acclaimed Uruguayan writer Galeano offers another striking but hard to classify work—except in relation to his own oeuvre: this book being something like a companion piece to Book of Embraces or his three-volume Memory of Fire. In pithy retellings of creation myths and reflections on history, he uses the past to comment on the present: juxtaposing the origin of the Hindu caste system and the untouchable class, whose members were responsible for cleaning up the wreckage of the 2004 tsunami, revealing how the casualties of the invasion of Iraq were not only human but memory itself, embodied by the destruction of priceless artifacts from the birthplace of writing. These vignettes embrace the exalted and the humble, and consistently privilege the narratives of the dispossessed—indigenous people, women and accounts from the global south. Across disparate civilizations and centuries—but always with an unflinching eye (and irony) trained on the present—Galeano's stories register the imaginations of our mythmaking species, the elaborate gestures of (gendered) forms of power and the spirit of rebellion and resilience that fires the underdog masses. (June)
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From Booklist

*Starred Review* In his poetic nonfiction, Galeano performs the sort of extraordinary feats of compassion, artistry, and imagination achieved in fiction by his fellow visionary Latin American writers, especially Borges, García Márquez, and Bolaño. Galeano’s seminal works, most notably Memory of Fire (1988), have been enormously influential in both content and form, and now this historian of conscience, this humanely ironic commentator and dazzling storyteller, distills the entire wild pageant of human history into a radiant mosaic of pithy fables, essays, and portraits. Galeano circles the planet, tallying our triumphs and crimes from cave paintings to genocide, gathering myths, exposing lies, and reclaiming forgotten heroes. Origin stories are a favorite subject, both authentic and impishly improvised, as in “Origin of the World Trade Organization,” in which Zeus chooses Hermes to be the god of trade “because he was the best liar.” Galeano is particularly ardent in his parsing of the perpetual injustice and violence against women, the perversion of religion and the habit of war, the horrors of slavery, the evolution of science, and the pillaging of the earth. Themes and connecting patterns rise up like waves and carry forward flotillas of essays in this gorgeously fluid and caustic chronicle of the human condition. --Donna Seaman

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Product Details

• Reading level: Ages 16 and up
  
• Hardcover: 400 pages
• Publisher: Nation Books; 1 edition (May 26, 2009)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1568584237
• ISBN-13: 978-1568584232
• Product Dimensions: 8.3 x 5.6 x 1.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.1 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (19 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #225,724 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #83 in Books > History > Historical Study > Essays

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

64 of 66 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars History In The Eyes Of The Dispossessed, July 18, 2009

By 

John D. Cofield - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Mirrors: Stories of Almost Everyone (Hardcover)

The old adage that history is written by the winners does not apply to Eduardo Galeano's Mirrors: Stories of Almost Everyone. In this book of short vignettes, some only a few sentences and none longer than a page, Galeano traces the world's history from the first hunter gatherers to the dawn of the twenty-first century through the eyes of slaves, women, colonized natives, defeated rebels, and other powerless people. Galeano illuminates patterns and themes and by careful juxtaposition and commentary draws parallels between events in the distant past and in more modern times. He has a fine gift for irony, and uses it skillfully. He is one of Latin America's most acclaimed writers, and naturally much of his book concentrates on that region, but other areas are also given coverage.

Naturally the politics behind Mirrors are left wing, but Galeano displays as much contempt for Lenin, Stalin, and Mao as he does for Hitler, Franco, and various Spanish and Portuguese kings. Several of his vignettes describe the early years of the Cuban Revolution, with kind words for Fidel and especially Che, but I was surprised to find not a single word about Hugo Chavez and the Bolivarian Revolution in Venezuela. Galeano's primary focus is to detail the effects of power upon the powerless, of imperialism, colonialism, industrialization, free trade, and globalization and their impacts on the poorer peoples and regions.

This is not a comfortable book to read, especially for Westerners, but it illuminates a point of view many who live in the wealthy developed regions can find difficult to comprehend. Countering arguments can and should be made to some of Galeano's points, but before those arguments can have any force the other side needs to be recognized, and the peoples and countries whose labor and resources have supported the developed world for centuries need to be heard at long last.

29 of 30 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Wonderful Tapestry Of Language And History., August 20, 2009

By 

Mr. Fellini "Fellini" (Orange County, California United States) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Mirrors: Stories of Almost Everyone (Hardcover)

There is a drought of literature these days rich in history and radical passion, but here we have Eduardo Galeano with an epic that spans the ages. "Mirrors" is a poetic, energetic journey from the earliest days of civilization to our own, hectic era. Like his best works, Galeano brings humanity and insight to his stories not just about the powerful, but about the never mentioned masses who are the victims of history. Like his brilliant "Memory Of Fire" trilogy, "Mirrors" chronicles the major events that have shaped continents, but it gives a voice to those living in the shadows.

In "Mirrors" Galeano keeps his trademark style in place, using not chapters, but vignettes to tell his stories. He wants to provide numerous doses of information, assembling the history of the world into a gallery of beautiful prose and powerful drama. We travel from Iraq to Rome, from Greece to China, from Cuba to Washington, not only learning, but feeling the times and events. As in his best works, Galeano surprises us with his discoveries. Who knew Muhammed's first biographer was a former preacher named George Bush? We learn that the infamous Bacchanals so celebrated by the ancients were forbidden by the powerful because they feared that drunken slaves would forget they were slaves. Everyone from Caesar to Jesus gets a mention, always with a fresh eye and a little touch of knowing humor.

Galeano is hated by the right-wing for being a leftist radical, no doubt that hatred was even more cemented by Hugo Chavez giving Barack Obama a copy of Galeano's classic work, "Open Veins Of Latin America" (which one hopes he would read). His radicalism comes across in "Mirrors," but it is not a dogmatic form of radicalism, it is a passionate feeling to simply tell truths. There are wonderful moments where Galeano reminds us of moments in time we conveniently forget, such as the Haitian Revolution, the first successful slave revolt in history where Haiti became the first nation to abolish slavery and essentially the first truly free republic in the Americas. Galeano also reminds us how Haiti was then blockaded by a world where white men ruled over all others, even Thomas Jefferson warned that Haiti was a virus, a bad example that needed to be contained. Mao, Lenin, and Fidel Castro are mentioned, but along with their faults Galeano makes sure to mention their contributions and historical importance as well. In one striking passage, Galeano lists all the American corporations who helped Nazi Germany in its rise and made a killing off Adolf Hitler's racist social projects. The French Revolution, Marx, Abraham Lincoln, the American Civil War, the 1871 Paris Commune, all are brought to life to great prose and important historical insights. Some beautiful moments belong to Galeano's exploration of the East and the histories of Iraq and China. He reminds us that Iraq was basically where civilization began, and now much of that history has been lost, crushed under a brutal US invasion. A humorous section reminds us of how many inventions China has contributed to the world. But Galeano does not shy away from the sadder moments of history, such as when England invades China to force upon it the opium trade.

It is very sad to see the current bestseller lists dominated by right-wing, yellow journalism books by people like Michelle Malkin and Glenn Beck when here Galeano is offering a truly worthwhile book that has a lot more to say about society and history than any of the previously mentioned authors. There is so much history we tend to forget or don't even know, Galeano here makes it available. What were the Founding Fathers' REAL thoughts about class and society? You'll find them right here, as well as stories about the colonization of Africa, Asia and Latin America's struggles for independence which continue to this day. Galeano writes it all with elegance, humor and conviction. Who remembers that in 1995 the Smithsonian killed an exhibition on the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki? Galeano does, he also reminds us how penicillin was originally ignored when first discovered. There is simply too much history in "Mirrors" to fully describe here, and it is best that way because much of this book is a jewel to be discovered. "Mirrors" is a very special book, this is truly valuable reading, and when you finish it make sure to go look for his other works. Galeano isn't just telling us something, he's teaching us as well.

13 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Great Book!, September 3, 2009

By 

Ali R. Samsami "samsalami" (OC, California) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Mirrors: Stories of Almost Everyone (Hardcover)

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.