You are a human animal.

You are a very special breed, for you are the only animal.

Who can think, who can reason, who can read?

Hello and welcome to Bookworm. I'm Michael Sulfrablatt.

Today, my guest is Eduardo Galliano,

and this is the final show in a series of shows,

which is a collaboration between the Getty Center

for the History of Art and Humanities and Bookworm.

The title of the series is Imaging the Us

and Exploration of Autobiographical Writing.

My guest today, Eduardo Galliano, is the author most recently of Walking Words, which is recently published by Norton.

He's the author as well of The Book of Embraces and Memory of Fire, a historical trilogy, a history of the

American continent, from the tip of Alaska to the islands below South America, the history

of the entire hemisphere.

I wanted to begin by asking you then,

having written a history that traverses so many boundaries.

How do you make a collective history?

Well, Michael, I tried to help a little

in the very difficult task of recovering memory.

I'm trying to offer memory.

It's broken in so many little pieces.

So I'm offering these little pieces to readers,

...