Living and Dying in São Paulo

“Living and Dying in São Paulo is methodologically innovative, conceptually powerful, and engagingly written. Jeffrey Lesser’s book has rare precision and creativity. Not only does he give an insightful reading of place and people, he also makes a bold case for historians to adopt new approaches and for those in the social and biomedical sciences to pose questions historically. This is the kind of writing I am sure most historians—myself included—wish they could do.” - Jerry Dávila, author of Hotel Trópico: Brazil and the Challenge of African Decolonization, 1950–1980

“Drawing on historically grounded and community-based research on public health in São Paulo’s Bom Retiro neighborhood, Jeffrey Lesser outlines the close relationship between public health programs and racialized anxieties directed at poor Black and immigrant communities to show how class stigmatization and ethnic stereotyping have complicated official efforts to effectively engage with the community. Timely and urgent, Living and Dying in São Paulo is a superior work of scholarship by a leading historian of Brazil.” - Christopher Dunn, author of Contracultura: Alternative Arts and Social Transformation in Authoritarian Brazil

"[Living and Dying in São Paulo] distances itself from a purely top-down perspective on public policies, bringing us closer to how these policies are actually carried out." - Antonella Delmonte Allasia, Mecila

"The book skillfully weaves together historical vignettes, contemporary observations, anecdotes, and data, moving fluidly between past and present." - Lucas Magalhães Moreira, Family Medicine

"An essential scholarly work that addresses a pressing issue from a novel lens." - Denise Martin, International Migration Review