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.