The Book of Rio

The Book of Rio
Author: Cesar Cardoso
Publisher: Comma Press
Total Pages: 127
Release: 2015-06-12
Genre: Fiction
ISBN:

It’s the city the rest of the world descends on to party…. whether for the spectacular annual Carnival, the sun-kissed beaches, the World Cup, or, in 2016, the Olympics. It’s also a place that’s sadly become synonymous with some of the excesses of partying, the dark underbelly that accompanies any urban hedonist’s destination. But these are just two images of Rio. There are countless others: opulent seat of two former empires; stronghold of brutal, twentieth-century dictatorships; sprawling metropolis stretched between stunning mountain tops and equally stunningeconomic extremes – from the affluence of neighbourhoods like Leblon and Ipanema, to the overcrowded slums in the foothills, the favelas. This anthology brings together ten short stories that go beyond the postcards and snapshots, and introduce us to real residents of Rio – the cariocas: young hopefuls training to be the next stars of samba, exhausted labourers press-ganged into meeting an impossible construction deadline (the nation’s pride being at stake), bored call-girls, nostalgic drag queens, married couples having petty middle-class domestics…. These are characters who’ve developed a deep understanding of Rio’s contradictions, a way of living with the grey areas – between the grime and the glitz – that make Rio the ‘marvellous city’ it is.

Favela

Favela
Author: Janice Perlman
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 445
Release: 2010-06-10
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 0199709556

Janice Perlman wrote the first in-depth account of life in the favelas, a book hailed as one of the most important works in global urban studies in the last 30 years. Now, in Favela, Perlman carries that story forward to the present. Re-interviewing many longtime favela residents whom she had first met in 1969--as well as their children and grandchildren--Perlman offers the only long-term perspective available on the favelados as they struggle for a better life. Perlman discovers that while educational levels have risen, democracy has replaced dictatorship, and material conditions have improved, many residents feel more marginalized than ever. The greatest change is the explosion of drug and arms trade and the high incidence of fatal violence that has resulted. Yet the greatest challenge of all is job creation--decent work for decent pay. If unemployment and under-paid employment are not addressed, she argues, all other efforts will fail to resolve the fundamental issues. Foreign Affairs praises Perlman for writing "with compassion, artistry, and intelligence, using stirring personal stories to illustrate larger points substantiated with statistical analysis."

Porous City

Porous City
Author: Bruno Carvalho
Publisher: Liverpool University Press
Total Pages: 252
Release: 2017-09-25
Genre: History
ISBN: 1786948591

A timely and original cultural history of Rio de Janeiro.

Dancing with the Devil in the City of God

Dancing with the Devil in the City of God
Author: Juliana Barbassa
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
Total Pages: 352
Release: 2015-07-28
Genre: History
ISBN: 1476756279

From prizewinning journalist and Brazilian native Juliana Barbassa comes a deeply reported and beautifully written account of the seductive and chaotic city of Rio de Janeiro as it struggles with poverty and corruption on the brink of the 2016 Olympic Games. Juliana Barbassa moved a great deal throughout her life, but Rio was always home. After twenty-one years abroad, she returned to find her native city—once ravaged by inflation, drug wars, corrupt leaders, and dying neighborhoods—undergoing a major change. Rio has always aspired to the pantheon of global capitals, and under the spotlight of the 2014 World Cup and the 2016 Olympic Games it seems that its moment has come. But in order to prepare itself for the world stage, Rio must vanquish the entrenched problems that Barbassa recalls from her childhood. Turning this beautiful but deeply flawed place into a pristine showcase of the best that Brazil has to offer in just a few years is a tall order—and with the whole world watching, the stakes couldn’t be higher. Library Journal called Dancing with the Devil in the City of God “akin to Charlie LeDuff’s Detroit”—a book that “combines history and personal interviews in an informative and engaging work.” This kaleidoscopic portrait of Rio introduces the reader to the people who make up this city of extremes, revealing their aspirations and their grit, their violence, their hungers, and their splendor, and shedding light on the future of this city they are building together. Dancing with the Devil in the City of God is an insider perspective from a native daughter and “a fascinating look at the people who live in and aspire to change one of the world’s most impressive cities” (Booklist, starred review).

Reading Rio de Janeiro

Reading Rio de Janeiro
Author: Zephyr Frank
Publisher: Stanford University Press
Total Pages: 248
Release: 2016-01-06
Genre: History
ISBN: 0804797307

Reading Rio de Janeiro blazes a new trail for understanding the cultural history of 19th-century Brazil. To bring the social fabric of Rio de Janeiro alive, Zephyr Frank flips the historian's usual interest in literature as a source of evidence and, instead, uses the historical context to understand literature. By focusing on the theme of social integration through the novels of José de Alencar, Machado de Assis, and Aluisio Azevedo, the author draws the reader's attention to the way characters are caught between conflicting moral imperatives as they encounter the newly mobile, capitalist, urban society, so different from the slave-based plantations of the past. Some characters grow and triumph in this setting; others are defeated by it. Though literature infuses this social history of 19th-century Rio, it is replete with maps, graphs, non-fiction sources, and statistical data and analysis that are the historian's stock-in-trade. By connecting a literary understanding of the social problems with the quantitative data traditional historical methods provide, Frank creates a richer and deeper understanding of society in 19th-century Rio.

Drugs & Democracy in Rio de Janeiro

Drugs & Democracy in Rio de Janeiro
Author: Enrique Desmond Arias
Publisher: Univ of North Carolina Press
Total Pages: 303
Release: 2006
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 0807830607

Taking an ethnographic approach to understanding urban violence, Enrique Desmond Arias examines the ongoing problems of crime and police corruption that have led to widespread misery and human rights violations in many of Latin America's new democracies.

Policing Rio de Janeiro

Policing Rio de Janeiro
Author:
Publisher: Stanford University Press
Total Pages: 390
Release: 1993-09
Genre: History
ISBN: 0804765537

When in 1808 members of the Portuguese royal entourage arrived in Rio de Janeiro, the capital of a colony most had previously known only through administrative reports and balance sheets, they encountered a hostile and dangerous population that included a large number of African slaves. One of the institutions they brought from Lisbon was the General Intendancy of Police, which was the foundation on which the city's police institutions were built. The government met the challenge of bringing the inhabitants of Rio de Janeiro under control with a repressive apparatus that grew along with the problem it was created to solve. Policing Rio de Janeiro is a history of one of the fundamental institutions of the modern world through which the power of the state intrudes on public space to control and direct behavior. It is also a study of the way people resisted the repressive arm of the state, including heretofore unreported cases of slave rebellion as well as forms of everyday resistance. The author shows how the historical development of the police of Rio de Janeiro, through a dialectic of repression and resistance, was part of a more general transition from the traditional application of control through private hierarchies to the modern exercise of power through public institutions. Using the rich records - which include internal correspondence and official reports - of the police system and its civilian counterparts the judicial and jail systems, the author explores the point at which repression and resistance collided, on the squares, streets, and back alleys of Brazil's capital city. The resulting disturbances served as a catalyst for the formation of institutions and procedures that provided a veneer of modernity over traditional attitudes and relationships, protecting and strengthening them. In a conceptual context that includes the ideas of Foucault, Weber, and Gramsci, the author goes beyond institutional history to examine the changing social conditions of Rio de Janeiro and the exercise of power by its elites.

Empire Adrift

Empire Adrift
Author: Patrick Wilcken
Publisher: Bloomsbury UK
Total Pages: 300
Release: 2004-01-01
Genre: Brazil
ISBN: 9780747556725

In 1807, at the height of the Napoleonic wars, the Portuguese prince regent Dom João made an extraordinary decision. Although horrified by the idea of sea travel, he opted to transplant his entire court and government to Portugal's largest colony, Brazil. With French troops closing in on Lisbon, aristocrats, ministers, priests and servants - a staggering 10,000 in all - clambered on board the rickety Portuguese fleet. After a rough transatlantic passage they spilled off their ships bedraggled, lice-ridden and dressed in rags, to the astonishment of their new world subjects. Thus began a unique 13-year period of imperial rule from the tropics. Rio de Janeiro was soon graced with a new opera house, lush botanical gardens and a royal palace - a 'tropical Versailles' set against the city's stunning jungle-clad mountains. But this metropolitan façade only partially obscured the brutal workings of what was then the largest slaving port in the Americas. While the court grappled with the dark side of its own empire, Brazil, with its eclectic mix of African, European and indigenous influences, was coming of age. Patrick Wilcken brings this remarkable period to the page, blending vivid contemporary testament with a rich evocation of the one time in history when European royalty went native.

From My Window

From My Window
Author:
Publisher:
Total Pages:
Release: 2020-04-15
Genre:
ISBN: 9781936348589

What do you see from your window? This #OwnVoices picture book from Brazil offers a firsthand view of what children growing up in the favelas of Rio de Janeiro see every day. A vibrant and diverse celebration of urban community living, brought to life by unique, colorful illustrations that juxtapose brick buildings with lush jungle plants.

Rio

Rio
Author: Fiona Davis
Publisher: Scholastic
Total Pages: 32
Release: 2012
Genre: Children's stories
ISBN: 9781908351081

Extensive reading is essential for improving fluency and there is a real need in the ELT classroom for contemporary, low-level reading material for younger learners. This reader is based on the hit 2011 animated movie Rio about Blu, a domesticated macaw who goes to Rio de Janeiro to save his species. Blu and Jewel is one of three readers based on the film.