Sérgio Buarque de Holanda's Roots of Brazil is an iconic book on Brazilian history, society, and culture. It appears here for the first time in an English language translation with a foreword, "Why Read Roots of Brazil Today?" by Pedro Meira Monteiro, one of the world's leading experts on Buarque de Holanda. Along with other early twentieth-century works, such as The Masters and the Slaves by Gilberto Freyre and The Colonial Background of Modern Brazil by Caio Prado Júnior, Roots of Brazil, set the parameters of Brazilian historiography for a generation and continues to offer keys to understanding the complex history of Brazil.