The fruit of decades of research, Before Brasília will be an essential point of reference for discussions about the colonization of the Brazilian center-west, because of the scope of the research in various archives across Brazil, Portugal, the United States, and Austria as well as the project's theoretical and methodological rigor.
The narrative, rich in details about the environment, material culture, and the daily lives of the different actors in the sertões (backlands), provides elements that guide the imagination of the reader in a fascinating dive into the past. The beautiful array of illustrations collected in the Library of Congress and the Oliveira Lima Library in Washington, DC, and the visual reproductions of the ethnographic material collected by the naturalist Johann Emanuel Pohl for the Museum für Völkerkunde of Vienna greatly help the reader interested in knowing the unexplored histories of the conquest and “civilization” of the region. This proves...
