Introduction: The Eyes of the City 1. Imagining the Marvelous City: Spectacle and urban spaces 2. Modernist Ruins: National narratives and architectural forms 3. The Visible and the Invisibles: Photography and social imaginaries in Brazil 4. Carnival Crowds 5. Tropical Babylon: Copacabana and the poetics of nostalgia and decadence 6. Favelas: Realist aesthetics, consumption and authorship 7. Narrating the Streets Afterword

Beatriz Jaguaribe is a professor at the School of Communications of the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro. She is the author of Fins de Século: Cidade e Cultura no Rio de Janeiro ( 1998) ; Mapa do Maravilhoso do Rio de Janeiro ( 2001); O choque do real: estética, mídia, cultura ( 2007), among other books. Her essays on urban culture, representations of the self and national imaginaries have been published in Public Culture, Space and Culture, Journal of Latin American Cultural Studies and several Brazilian journals. She has been awarded the RioArte Fellowship(1999); ICAS Fellowship at NYU (2000), Guggenheim ( 2004) , PLAS Fellowship at Princeton University ( 2009-2010), the Andrés Bello Chair at the King Juan Carlos of Spain Center at NYU ( 2012 ), and the CNPq award ( 2012-2015). She has been a visiting professor at Stanford University, Dartmouth College, The New School of Social Research, Princeton University and New York University.

Jaguaribe's book offers exciting and creative perspectives on the urban imaginaries and experiences of Rio de Janeiro. It illuminates how Rio de Janeiro's popular culture, artistic productions, social violence, and urban layout make it one of the foremost cityscapes in the world.