Caldo Verde Is Not Stone Soup identifies elements of an emerging Portuguese American culture in the United States. The book discusses subjects and themes that reflect the richness and diversity of this culture. Included are analyses of the Portuguese fondness for nicknames over surnames, pejorative terms ("portugee," "Gee"), beau ideal heroes (John Philip Sousa, John Dos Passos, and Peter Francisco), now forgotten early emigrants, foreign visitors to the Azores (Samuel Longfellow and Thomas Wentworth Higginson), proverbs from the oral and literary traditions, the Portuguese sailor on American ships, and the saga of English As She Is Spoke, a serious-minded textbook that became a comic phenomenon.

George Monteiro earned his A.B. and Ph.D. at Brown University, and his A.M. at Columbia University. His faculty appointments include Emeritus Professor of English and Adjunct Professor of Portuguese at Brown University. He received an honorary D.H.L. from the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth, and is a member of the Order of Prince Henry the Navigator with the grade of Commander. He is also a member of Phi Beta Kappa and has authored numerous books on American and Portuguese writers.

Preface - New Names in a New Country - Stars and Stripes Forever - Portingale to Portugee - 150 Years of a Classic - The All-Purpose Peter Francisco - Higginson in the Azores - Longfellow, Tutor to the Dabneys - M. Borges, Boston Businessman - Denizens of the Land of Nod - Straight Writing, Crooked Lines - Authenticity and Its Uses - Let Them Eat Crab - Some Say Adage, Some Say Saw - Words Like Cherries - At Aunt Rose's - Seaman Melville and Captain Macy on the Portuguese Whaler - Nineteenth-Century Festivities in Halfmoon Bay - Crowned at Pentecost - Henry R. Lang on the Portuguese in New Bedford - Record of Publication - Biographical Note - Bibliography.