Mirrors

An ambitious and stylish history of human civilization told through hundreds of unheard and forgotten voices, by the acclaimed author of The Open Veins of Latin America 

“Nothing less than a capsule history of the human race….Brutally, precisely documented.”  —New York Times Book Review 

The old adage says that history is written by the victors. Mirrors is an unofficial history of the world seen through history’s unseen, unheard, and forgotten. Told in hundreds of kaleidoscopic vignettes, Galeano seamlessly moves from prehistory to the present, tracing how power, conflict, and connection have always been at the heart of human civilization. Readers will encounter foundational artists, writers, gods, and visionaries, whose lives span from the Garden of Eden to twenty-first-century New York, including the black slaves who built the White House and the many women erased by men’s fears. A masterful blend of the poetic and polemic, Mirrors is both a reckoning with, and celebration of humanity. 

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