"Needell's monumental work on Brazil's second empire makes a major contribution to our understanding of the monarchy, slavery, imperial politics and the importance of ideology in Brazilian history. The product of many years of painstaking research, the book fills the longstanding need for a sophisticated political and ideological history of the period—a subject that languished too long in relative neglect. Needell has succeeded in bringing the world of imperial politicians to us in its many complexities. His judgments are sober and balanced, his analyses persuasive, and his extensive documentation a rich mine for further research. In sheer scope his examination of powerful political families, their kinship and clientage networks, and their roles in the history of parties and parliament makes this a foundational work for all subsequent scholarship on Brazil."—Conference on Latin American History Warren Dean Prize

"This work is a very considerable contribution to our understanding of Brazil's emergence as a nation-state. It provides a historical explanation of why Brazil continues to be—almost two centuries after independence—highly hierarchical, conservative, and unegalitarian in terms of race, education and wealth. This book is no less valuable as a study of the emergence and the dynamics of party politics in Imperial Brazil."—Roderick J. Barman, Professor Emeritus, University of British Columbia

"Needell has produced a detailed, elegantly written book about the Regency and most of the Second Empire...His lively narrative, judicious quotes, and thumbnail biographies make this both enjoyable and essential reading for historians of Brazil."—Colonial Latin American Historical Review

Jeffrey D. Needell is Associate Professor of Modern Latin American History at the University of Florida. He is author of A Tropical Belle Epoque: Elite Culture and Society in Turn-of-the-Century Rio de Janeiro (1987).