Anthologies of Brazilian history intended for classroom use have a long and distinguished pedigree. E. Bradford Burns’s Documentary History of Brazil (1966), appearing two years after the military coup that ousted president João Goulart, was celebratory, stressing territorial expansion, peaceful political evolution, and the growing power of the central state in providing stability for Brazil in contrast to Spanish America. A Century of Brazilian History (1969) by Richard Graham, edited during the “hard-line” period of the dictatorship, drew a grim picture, emphasizing both the social and economic injustices prevalent in Brazil’s historical experience and the failure of populists rulers, the Catholic Church or the political left to reverse this course. Recently, Kevin Danaher and Michael Schellenberger, in Fighting for the Soul of Brazil (1995), gathered testimonies from women, Afro-Brazilians, gays and others struggling for a reformed Brazil ready to enter the twenty-first century free of racism and sexism. What no...

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