Carvalho, Bruno. Porous City: A Cultural History of Rio de Janeiro (from 1810s Onward). Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2013.

Detailed, lucid, judicious, and engaging, this cultural history of Rio de Janeiro incites interest via its uncovering of the many socio-historical and cultural layers embedded in the urban memory of a city that radiates socio-cultural and ethno-racial mixtures while simultaneously stratifying such elements economically, racially, and socially. Never skirting the inherent contradictions and socio-economic inequities historically prevalent in Brazil’s former national capital, emblematic of many other cities in the nation and abroad, Porous City does indeed capture how a proclivity for cultural porosity with its ebbs and flows contributes to the definition and reformulation of urban spaces and how that porosity conveys indelible social ramifications.