Amy Chazkel’s Laws of Chance explores the rise of a cultural phenomenon that has engrossed the Brazilian imaginary since the turn of the twentieth century: the lottery game jogo do bicho. Its multifaceted analysis ties the “animal game” to the rise of urbanization, consumer capitalism, positivist criminology, and the cash economy in the First Republic (1889-1930).
Co-Winner of April Essay Contest: Another Face of Empire: Bartolomé de Las Casas, Indigenous Rights, and Ecclesiastical Imperialism by Daniel Castro (2007)
Bartolomé de Las Casas has been long renowned as a religious reformer, champion of indigenous rights and an advocate of the freedoms of the Indians in the Americas. He has been lauded as the “Father of America” and “noble protector of the Indians.” Conversely, he has also been much disparaged and criticized by historians.
Slave Rebellion in Brazil: The Muslim Uprising of 1835 in Bahia by João José Reis (1993)
Shortly after 1:00am on January 25, 1835, a contingent of African-born slaves and former slaves emerged from a house at number 2 Ladeira da Praça and overpowered the justice of the peace and a police lieutenant. Throughout the night approximately six hundred rebels ran through the streets fighting and vandalizing a number of municipal buildings.
Fordlandia by Greg Grandin (2010)
Greg Grandin has written a page-turner that tells the story of Henry Ford’s foray into the Brazilian Amazon and much more. In 1925, Ford met with Harvey Firestone to discuss England’s challenge to the US rubber supply. Much as the Belgians had done in Africa in the late nineteenth-century, England had extracted this resource by proxy—through companies such as the Peruvian Amazon Rubber Company in the Amazon and its Asian colonies. Ford’s response was to embark upon his own South American venture into the world of rubber.
Mapping the Earth, Mapping the Air
Knowing one’s exact location was among the greatest challenges of the human push into the air, as it is in the exploration of any new frontier, before there were such things as aeronautical charts, that is, maps for aerial navigation. It is easy for a generation with pocket sized access to Google Maps to underestimate how different our world looks from above if you have only seen it from ground level.
A Dangerous Idea
Today, people who live in democratic societies take religious freedom for granted. In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, most Europeans found the idea of “freedom of conscience” deeply threatening. How could the fabric of society withstand competing religious ideas? What would convince people to live moral lives in the absence of a single, state-supported church?
Hollywood’s Brazil: Rio (2011)
It’s no coincidence that Hollywood has a thing for Rio de Janeiro. The city’s breathtaking landscape enlivens the most uninspired camerawork. Its pulsating musical rhythms spice up any soundtrack. Rio’s favelas (slums), with their arresting squalor, stoke movie-goers’ fears and fantasies
Hello, Hello Brazil: Popular Music in the Making of Modern Brazil by Bryan McCann (2004)
National identity has been both a dream and a nightmare for historians. When they attempt to historicize the concept, it becomes a thick web of actors, motives, and unintended consequences. Exploring the “invention of tradition” underlying modern national identities proves an appealing but extremely difficult task.
A Poverty of Rights: Citizenship and Inequality in Twentieth-Century Rio de Janiero by Brodwyn Fischer (2010)
Brodwyn Fischer’s A Poverty of Rights: Citizenship and Inequality in Twentieth-Century Rio de Janiero explores the heterogeneous class of the urban poor in Brazil’s national capital from 1920 to 1950.
At the center of the book are the favelas, Rio’s infamous shantytowns, where the majority of the urban poor resided.
Death is a Festival: Funeral Rites and Rebellion in Nineteenth-Century Brazil by João José Reis (2007)
Death and the dead were omnipresent in nineteenth century Salvador da Bahia, Brazil. Exuberant funeral processions marched festively in the streets and graves filled the church floors where parishioners stood. Since so many died, death was incorporated into many aspects of life in the city – and the living spent considerable effort in preparing for their own deaths and the deaths of others.