Dr. Jeffrey Lesser, Samuel Candler Dobbs Professor of History, has published a new monograph, Living and Dying in São Paulo: Immigrants, Health, and the Built Environment in Brazil, with Duke University Press. The work examines competing visions of wellbeing in Brazil among racialized immigrants, policymakers, and health officials over 150 years and primarily in São Paulo’s Bom Retiro neighborhood, drawing out the connected systems of the built environment, public health laws and practices, and citizenship. In addition to historical and literary documentation, Lesser’s book was informed by a multi-year observation of a basic health team at the Octávio Augusto Rodovalho Public Health Clinic of the Brazilian National Health Service. Read praise for Living and Dying below and find the full open access book from Duke UP.

“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, Jorge Paulo Lemann Chair in Brazilian History, the University of Illinois.