The Gilberto Freyre Reader

THE PROFOUND AND CHARMING MIND OF Gilberto Freyre, incomparable explicator of Brazilian civilization and one of the world's foremost social historians, is variously revealed in this book of selected writings, many never before translated into English.

His subjects range from the English language and the "religious merrymaking" of the Hindus of Queula to the success and failure of Brasilia. He writes about children's books and about the Iberian concept of time, about race and slavery, about age and experience versus youth; he converses with Aldous Huxley, remembers Amy Lowell, sets down his perceptions about his native land, and about himself as a writer and as a sociologist. In forms as disparate as poetry and diaries, in brief, pointed vignettes, and in wonderful passages from his great works of history, these seventy-five selections represent the wide scope of Freyre's concerns, and the grace of his scholarship. The Gilberto Freyre Reader is a sampler of his life and his work.