Brazilian History books

Probably the best book around in English is actually a sourcebook. "The Brazil Reader: History, Culture, Politics"...edited by Robert Levine. It has a bunch of translated documents like diaries, memos, and stuff, along with some essays. I loved it.

Roberto da Matta is probably the most well-known historian outside of Brazil. He's more of a social historian though, but his stuff is pretty interesting. His most famous book is Carnaval, Rogues, and Heroes. I think this book you will probably only be able to find in a university library. Another famous historian is Darcy Ribeiro. You can find his book on Amazon.com.

I know of a several more history books, but they are on more specific topics like Candomble, slavery, and Brazilian culture. etc. There are a lot of very well-written books on Brazilian music and they all touch on the historical context. You also can't really go wrong with some of the books by some of Brazil's famous novelists. Probably one of the best historical novels is "Os Sertoes" by Euclides da Cunha. The English version is "Rebellion in the Backland." Mario Vargas Llosa also wrote about this historical rebellion in Brazil...it's a lot more recent than da Cunha's one..."The War of the End of the World."