Brazil in Books

The books, in order

1. 1

   History · 17 min

   Brazil: A History

   Eduardo Bueno

   Handing an entire territory to whoever had the money to gamble on it alone looks practical on paper, but it almost always leaves the project hostage to whoever funded the bet, and that is what sank most of the hereditary captaincies.

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2. 2

   History · 17 min

   1822: How a Prince Who Wanted to Be a Brazilian Emperor, a Scottish Admiral and a Wise Man Called José Bonifácio Brought Off the Most Important Event in Brazil's History

   Laurentino Gomes

   A political gesture becomes a national symbol when it serves, at the same time, the interests of those in charge and of those who finance those in charge.

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3. 3

   History · 17 min

   1889

   Laurentino Gomes

   When the economic base that holds up a government changes hands, that base's political loyalty changes along with it, no matter how much rhetoric is used to claim otherwise.

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4. 4

   History · 16 min

   Escravidão – Volume I: Do Primeiro Leilão de Cativos em Portugal até a Morte de Zumbi dos Palmares

   Laurentino Gomes

   According to Gomes, slavery already existed in Africa before the European ship arrived, but the Atlantic trade turned it into a large-scale, permanent system based on race.

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5. 5

   Economy and Society · 17 min

   Roots of Brazil

   Sérgio Buarque de Holanda

   According to Sérgio Buarque, the resistance to impersonal rules and orderly lines that many people today call the Brazilian way was not born here: it arrived in the cultural baggage of Portugal, of an Iberian Peninsula that valued the standout individual more than anonymous association among strangers.

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6. 6

   Economy and Society · 17 min

   The Brazilian People: The Formation and Meaning of Brazil

   Darcy Ribeiro

   Darcy calls the emptiness of the mixed-race person of the first centuries "nobodiness" (ninguendade): with no full place in the Indigenous, Portuguese, or African tradition, they had to invent an identity of their own.

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7. 7

   History · 18 min

   Brazil: A Biography

   Lilia M. Schwarcz and Heloisa M. Starling

   Slavery sustained the Brazilian economy for more than three centuries, which helps explain why inequality and racism did not disappear along with a law signed in 1888.

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8. 8

   History · 20 min

   Bossa Nova

   Ruy Castro

   Creative freedom also depends on material conditions: having talent and having the space to experiment are two different things.

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