Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

Masterpiece!! As I grow older I continue to unlearn the propaganda, lies, half-truths and omissions the American school system poured into my head. The corporate media and the largely ignorant masses who surrounded me, of course, helped to propagate and reinforce this misinformation so that by the time I reached adulthood I was as stupid, misinformed and biased as everyone else. How easy the sheep are led!! Along the way, by sheer dumb luck, I begin to meet certain rare individuals who knew what was happening and went through certain life experiences that caused me to question everything I thought I knew and believed in. It was a traumatic time in my life. At first I resisted the truth. How could everything my teachers, parents, friends, the media and various authoritarian figures told me be wrong??? Once the truth stuck its foot in my door I was finally forced to question everything and forced also to search for the truth on my own. Its something everyone must do if they really want to know reality. One source of the truth can be found in certain select books and their authors who are courageous enough to face the powers of falsehood and deception. Galeano's "Open Veins" is one such book. It, together with Howard Zinn's People's History, should replace all the current history books in our schools and should be required reading for the President of the US and all the others who hold the fate of our nation and the world in their hands. That is why Hugo Chavez gave it to Obama, hoping it would be read so that the leader of the US might gain some modicum of understanding about the history of Latin America. I doubt he ever read it. This book is packed border to border with facts, figures and accounts all duly documented with a bibliography nearly as long as the book itself. How one man could put together, assemble such a wealth of information, in one book of 300 pages is mind-boggling. I knew our government's foreign policy record in Latin America was bad but didn't know how bad. Now, I know--and it has left me saddened and exasperated because there is no way we can undo the injustices of six hundred years--not even a way we can change the current and future policies that perpetuate those injustices for those who hold power are too entrenched. My thanks and gratitude to Galeano, a giant of a man, through whose book I now know the history of Latin America--through whose book I now know the truth. "And There I Was" by DH Koester