At a time when various scholars seem to defend the view that because of gender, religion, or nationality some are more qualified to write certain histories than others, it is particularly refreshing to see a book about Brazilian intellectual and theorist of miscegenation Gilberto Freyre brought for the first time in a book-length volume to the English-speaking public. In this well-researched book, Peter Burke and Maria Lúcia Pallares-Burke joined forces to demonstrate Freyre's importance as a member of the Brazilian intellectual elite whose ideas are more original and more relevant than historiography normally gives him credit. When asked about the new book, Prof. Burke said, very humbly: ‘I am glad my wife was co-authoring it with me; otherwise, I would not have had the courage to write about a Brazilian scholar.’ It is clear, however, that precisely because the book was co-authored and shows clearly two different perspectives about the role of intellectual and cultural history, the treatment of Gilberto Freyre – Brazil's foremost theorist of physical, intellectual, cultural, and political mestiçagem, is both original and one which – it may be imagined – would have pleased Freyre himself.

The book starts by showing Freyre's influence on European scholars. Asa Briggs, Fernand Braudel, Alfred Métraux, and Lucien Febvre are cited as examples of scholars who read Freyre's works and engaged with his approach in matters of social history and the sociological study of race. Freyre's socio-cultural approach based on past structures of Brazilian history intertwined with both the early Annales school and the post-1970s British social criticism. Freyre himself claimed that his formation as an intellectual would not have been possible without his two sojourns in Europe. His perspective, he claimed – and the authors reiterate – was always one of an insider-outsider. Distance, Freyre argued, made it possible for him to see Brazilian society, culture, and politics with new eyes.

The book dwells extensively on Freyre's changing mindset about the problem of race. A younger Freyre had defended the view of the superiority of the white race and the negative effects of racial mixture on Brazilian society (a ‘mongrel race’, as he called it, physically and morally weaker than a pure-white population). In the 1920s, however, Freyre became interested in Franz Boas's work and questioned the pseudo-scientific approach whereby racial mixture was undesirable despite lack of concrete evidence. He started seeing that different races, if indeed possessing different attributes and characteristics, strengths, and weaknesses, could actually be mixed not to the detriment of the strongest race, but to its advantage. Having become acquainted with the works of José Martí and having re-read Walt Whitman's poems, a Freyre of more advanced years started developing the idea that mestiçagem (miscegenation) was actually the key to Brazil's strength, although he never abandoned the search for the ‘superior race’ – only shifted it from the white to the mestiço race.

Was he an ‘intellectual sponge’ who merely copied theories and adapted them to the Brazilian case? Hardly. The book argues that Freyre was one of the most original and influential social theorists of all times, having successfully combined the histories of material culture, of smells, tastes, colours, and noises, in order to bring back to life the shared structure of Brazil's patriarchal society. He was a pioneer in understanding the importance of race in Brazilian social, cultural, and political life, uniting historical narrative and sociology. Freyre's books still deserve much attention today because of the sharpness of his views about the importance of miscegenation to Brazilian history, an issue which is still far from clear in the minds of Brazilians. It is often said that Brazilians share an illusion of racial equality because of Brazil's peaceful abolition of slavery (in contrast to the United States' civil war). Freyre's books – the volume here reviewed shows – pointed to the hybrid character of Brazilian society showing the positive effect of racial mixture on all the races that constitute Brazil, and highlight the originality of this Brazilian sociologist in approaching the racial issue with a unique methodology.

As a part-time journalist, Freyre had an enormous reach in Brazil even before his best-seller, Casa grande e senzala (published in English as Masters and slaves). Freyre's Casa grande is his first attempt to offer the theme of the house in the interpretation of Brazilian history, moving away from metaphors of the child, the cannibal, and the chameleon that were common in Brazilian Modernism. Freyre explored the theme of hybridity in Casa grande by, first, showing his debt to Boas in his reinterpretation of the science of race. The Burkes argue that Freyre's use of racial categories was inevitable in the type of work he was writing. Freyre was not an ideologist of the negritude (blackness) like novelist Jorge Amado or a culturalist like historian Sérgio Buarque de Hollanda. Freyre's approach was one influenced by the issues of his time (rise of Communism, immigration issues, racism, Brazilian Modernism), and Freyre collected something from all these concerns to formulate original theories to set Brazil firmly amongst the great nations.

One aspect of the book which leaves readers wishing for more is Freyre's political agenda. His fate in Brazil became problematic in 1964, when, for fear of Communism, Freyre endorsed the military coup that established the dictatorship in Brazil (1964–85). His approval of and enthusiasm for other reactionary writers such as Maurice Barrès and Charles Maurras also raised suspicion towards his work. In fact, after he adopted the view that mestiçagem was positive, and formulated his thoughts about the superiority of mestiço race – which the Burkes referred to as ‘mulatto racism’ – his work also failed to go down well with the Brazilian middle class. Since the political re-opening, Freyre's ideas became unfashionable, and his books are not usually perused by students in Rio and São Paulo. This is but one reason why this book, rich as it is, offers a welcome addition to studies of Brazilian Modernism and social-cultural thought in twentieth-century Latin America.