"In this dazzling kaleidoscope of reflections, the renowned South American author Eduardo Galeano ranges widely, from childhood to love, from music and plants to fear, indignity, and indignation. In the signal style of his bestselling and much-admired Memory of Fire trilogy - brief fragments that build steadily into an organic whole - Galeano offers a rich, wry history of his life and times that is both calmly philosophical and fiercely political." "Beginning with blue algae, the earliest of life-forms, and jumping to the latest military outrage, these 333 vignettes alight on the Galeano family's immigration to Uruguay in the early twentieth century, the fate of love letters intercepted by a military dictatorship, abuses by the rich and powerful, and the author's own encounters with all manner of living matter, including generals, presidents, bums, dissidents, soccer stars, ducks, snakes, and trees. Out of these meditations emerges neither anger nor bitterness but a celebratory vision of a blessed life in a harsh world."--BOOK JACKET.