Review: Gilberto Freyre: social theory in the tropics By PETER BURKE and MARIA LÚCIA G. PALLARES-BURKE (Oxford,Peter Lang,2008),261 pp. Paper,£19.90

For those interested in Freyre's early years and early twentieth-century Brazilian cultural history, two other books should be very helpful but unfortunately neither has been translated from Portuguese. They are the above-mentioned Gilberto Freyre: a Victorian in the tropics (2005) by Pallares-Burke and Gilberto Freyre: a cultural biography (2007) by Rodríguez Larreta and Giucci.