Raízes do Brasil by Sérgio Buarque de Holanda
Published 1995 · 220 pages · 60,500 words · about 4 hours at an average pace · Essays & Criticism, History, Politics & Society
How hard is Raízes do Brasil to read?
Raízes do Brasil scores 53 out of 100 for difficulty on ReadingRate, making it quite demanding. The score is a weighted composite of nine measures: four of how hard the prose is to parse, five of how hard the meaning is to extract.
- Vocabulary: 55 out of 100
- Buarque writes formal mid-century Portuguese with sociological and historical terms, but the prose is clear and essayistic. It is more demanding than a popular history and well short of dense theory.
- Sentence structure: 55 out of 100
- His sentences are long and balanced, with subordinate clauses and measured transitions. They stay elegant and navigable, like a well-built academic essay.
- Abstraction: 68 out of 100
- The book works with concepts such as cordiality, personalism and the private-public divide, illustrated with colonial towns, plantations and habits. Ideas drive the argument, but concrete history anchors them.
- Information density: 65 out of 100
- In about 60,000 words Buarque covers Iberian culture, colonization, urbanization, abolition and politics. The compression is high and there are few digressions.
How Raízes do Brasil is regarded
Raízes do Brasil holds a literary regard score of 79 out of 100, weighing its place in the canon, its critical reception, its influence on other writers, and the standing of its author. Regard is measured separately from difficulty: a demanding book is not necessarily an admired one.