Children of the Days: A Calendar of Human History

This book is shaped like a calendar. With each day, comes a story. Its inspiration is the Mayan version of Genesis which tells, “And the days began to walk. And they, the days, made us. And thus we were born, the children of the days, the discoverers, lifes searchers.”

For each day, Galeano has chosen a story from that date, something unknown or almost unknown, of feasts and tragedies that really happened, from all possible years and places, violating the frontiers of maps and time.

Galeano challenges the reader to consider the human condition and our own wretched choices. These vignettes elevate the little known heroes of our world and decry the destruction of treasures (intellectual, linguistic, and emotional) that we have all but forgotten.

This book is like a cousin of Mirrors, full of yarns, prose poems, ditties and dance steps that resurrect the lives of the heroes who have fallen off the historical map. It reminds us of our sweet victories and darkest hours.

You will meet Manuela Leon, who stirred up Ecuador in the 1870s and caused the Indian masses to rise against forced labor and the payment of tribute. As if that were not enough, she also committed the impertinence of challenging Lieutenant Vallejo, a government official, to fight a duel before the astonished eyes of his soldiers, and in open combat her lance humiliated his sword.

You will learn:

The most popular episode of the Catholic catechism, Adam and Eve biting the apple, is not listed in the Bible.

The Greek Eratosthenes measured the waist of the world 2300 years ago, and was wrong by only sixty miles

That Aristotle wrote that a woman is "an incomplete man", and St Thomas of Aquino wrote that woman is "an error of nature".

That Spaniards who bathed were once accused of Muslim heresy.

That until 1990 that homosexuality was a mental illness, according to the World

Health Organization.

Only eleven people attended Karl Marx's funeral, including the undertaker.

Until 2008 that Nelson Mandela was still on the list of terrorist security risks to the

U.S.

In Haiti, according to ancient tradition, mourners should lead the funeral casket in a zigzag

to mislead the dead so they can no longer find the way back?

Every two weeks ... a language dies.

Galeano is like one of the walking librarians of the middle ages, who set up caravans during times of war as a refuge for books and stories. Galeano says that humans are made up both of atoms and stories. In this great humanist treasure he shows us how to live and how to remember. It awakens the best in us.

Unfurling like a medieval book of days, each page of Eduardo Galeano’s Children of the Days has an illuminating story that takes inspiration from that date of the calendar year, resurrecting the heroes and heroines who have fallen off the historical map, but whose lives remind us of our darkest hours and sweetest victories.

Challenging readers to consider the human condition and our own choices, Galeano elevates the little-known heroes of our world and decries the destruction of the intellectual, linguistic, and emotional treasures that we have all but forgotten.

Readers will discover many inspiring narratives in this collection of vignettes: the Brazilians who held a “smooch-in” to protest against a dictatorship for banning kisses that “undermined public morals”; the astonishing day Mexico invaded the United States; and the “sacrilegious” women who had the effrontery to marry each other in a church in the Galician city of A Coruña in 1901. Galeano also highlights individuals such as Pedro Fernandes Sardinha, the first bishop of Brazil, who was eaten by Caeté Indians off the coast of Alagoas, as well as Abdul Kassem Ismael, the grand vizier of Persia, who kept books safe from war by creating a walking library of 117,000 tomes aboard four hundred camels, forming a mile-long caravan.

Beautifully translated by Galeano’s longtime collaborator, Mark Fried, Children of the Days is a majestic humanist treasure that shows us how to live and how to remember. It awakens the best in us.

Galeanos new book is his richest and most poetic yet, a joyous calendar of the sacred and the damned, a book of inspiration for those fighting tyranny, greed, and amnesia

Unfurling like a medieval book of days, each page of Galeanos new work has an illuminating story that takes inspiration from that day of the calendar year. Each entry resurrects the heroes and heroines who have fallen off the historical map, but whose lives remind us of our darkest hours and sweetest victories.

Among many others, you will discover the Brazilians who held a “smooch in” to protest a dictatorship that banned kisses that “undermined public morals” and learn of the day Mexico invaded the United States, the “sacrilegious” women who had the effrontery to marry each other in a church in 1901, and Abdul Kassem Ismael, the grand vizier of Persia, who kept books safe from war by creating a walking library, 117,000 books aboard four hundred camels, forming a mile-long caravan.

Beautifully translated by Galeanos longtime collaborator, Mark Fried, Children of the Days is a great humanist treasure that shows us how to live and how to remember. It awakens the best in us.

Eduardo Galeano is one of Latin Americas most distinguished writers. He is the author of the three-volume Memory of Fire; Open Veins of Latin America; Soccer in Sun and Shadow; The Book of Embraces; Walking Words; Upside Down; and Voices in Time. Born in Montevideo in 1940, he lived in exile in Argentina and Spain for years before returning to Uruguay. His work has been translated into twenty-eight languages. He is recipient of many international prizes, including the first Lannan Prize for Cultural Freedom, the Casa de las Américas Prize, and the First Distinguished Citizen of the region by the countries of Mercosur.