This book discusses twentieth-century Brazilian political thought, arguing that while Rio de Janeiro intellectuals envisaged the state and the national bourgeoisie as the means to overcome dependency on foreign ideas and culture, São Paulo intellectuals looked to civil society and the establishment of new academic institutions in the search for national identity. Ronald H. Chilcote begins his study by outlining Brazilian intellectuals' attempt to transcend a sense of inferiority emanating from Brazilian colonialism and backwardness. Next, he traces the struggle for national identity in Rio de Janeiro through an account of how intellectuals of varying political persuasions united in search of a political ideology of national development. He then presents an analysis by São Paulo intellectuals on racial discrimination, social inequality, and class differentiation under early capitalism and industrialization. The book concludes with a discussion on how Brazilian intellectuals challenged foreign thinking about development through the state and representative democratic institutions, in contrast to popular and participatory democratic practices.

'The history of Brazil in the twentieth century is also the history of its public intellectuals. Ronald H. Chilcote fully understands how culture and politics were intertwined in Brazil, and he has written an extraordinary book on these Brazilian intellectuals, which is also a critical interpretation of how Brazil changed from an oligarchical society to a vibrant although unequal democracy.'

Luiz Carlos Bresser-Pereira - Emeritus Professor, Getulio Vargas Foundation

'Chilcote offers a wide-ranging study of intellectual currents in Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo, Brazil, in the second half of the twentieth century that shaped debates about economic development, industrialization, and Brazilian nationalism. Based on three decades of research and almost a hundred interviews and oral histories with leading intellectuals in the social sciences and humanities, this volume is an invaluable resource for scholars interested in understanding the intersection between academics and politics in late twentieth-century Brazil, as well as for specialists seeking a comprehensive compendium that synthesizes different debates and controversies that took place during the political upheavals of the last seventy years of Brazilian history.'

James N. Green - Carlos Manuel de Céspedes Chair of Latin American History, Brown University, Rhode Island

'This book’s extensive research and documentation, the fruit of four decades of teaching and research, will not only serve as a reference to experts in area studies but can also easily be adopted in undergraduate classes on Latin America, political economy, and history of ideas.'

Jawdat Abu-el-Haj - Federal University of Ceara

'This book reflects the breadth of engagement with the progressive intelligentsia of Rio and São Paulo by a passionate US observer committed to national and social liberation. Drawing on a half-century of interviews and dialogue, Ronald H. Chilcote’s survey nicely complements and extends earlier works by Carlos Guilherme Mota and Daniel Pecaut. Spanning seventy-five years in coverage, the book underlines a point made by Portuguese Nobel Prize recipient José Sarmago: for far too long ‘the error of the Marxist left has been to think that the weapons of the past will always serve to win the battles of the present'.'

John D. French - Duke University, North Carolina