Galeano, author of the "Memory of Fire" trilogy, combines a novelist's intensity, a poet's lyricism, a journalist's fearlessness, and the strong judgments of an engaged historian in "Upside Down", an eloquent, passionate, sometimes hilarious expose of first-world privileges and assumptions. Illustrations.

In a series of mock lesson plans and a program of study Galeano provides an eloquent, passionate, funny and shocking exposé 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 precious than humans, and children work from dark to dark. In the North, we are fed on a diet of artificial need and all made the same by things we own; the South is the galley slave enabling our greed.