To celebrate Rio’s new 2012 Unesco site , I am republishing this condensed passage from my book Brazil: Life, Blood, Soul. When Portuguese King João VI instituted the Botanical Garden in Rio in 1808, there were many fortunes to be made from the discovery and breeding of exotic plants. There are over 8,000 kinds of […]
An Ode to Rio
You may have sailed in the bay of Istanbul and taken a trip up the Bosporus and down the Sea of Marmara admiring the onion domes of the mosques in the seven-hilled old town; you may have gazed upon San Francisco Bay and the fog-covered Golden Gate Bridge on a balmy night enhanced by the […]