In a series of mock lesson plans and a "program of study" Galeano provides an eloquent, passionate, funny and shocking expose of First World privileges and assumptions. From a master class in "The Impunity of Power" to a seminar on "The Sacred Car"--with tips along the way on "How to Resist Useless Vices" and a declaration of the "The Right to Rave"--he surveys a world unevenly divided between abundance and deprivation, carnival and torture, power and helplessness.

We have accepted a "reality" we should reject, he writes, one where poverty kills, people are hungry, machines are more...

In this kaleidoscope of reflections, renowned South American author Eduardo Galeano ranges widely, from childhood to love, music, plants, fear, indignity, and indignation. In the signal style of his bestselling Memory of Fire trilogy--brief fragments that build steadily into an organic whole--Galeano offers a rich, wry history that is both calmly philosophical and fiercely political.

"Walking Words" is a brilliant feat of storytelling in the tradition of Italo Calvino's "Italian Folktale." In it, Eduardo Galeano, author of the acclaimed "Memory of Fire" trilogy, draws on the folklore of the rural and urban Latin America to discover and retell "the stories of ghouls and fools that I'd like to write." These tales are beautifully illustrated by his collaborator, the Brazilian wood cut artist Jose Francisco Borges, and become testaments to the power of stories to make and remake and enchant the world.