In Favela: Four Decades of Life on the Edge of Rio de Janeiro, Janice Perlman provides an in-depth study of life in Rio de Janeiro Janeiro's 1,020 favelas . He attempts to relocate and reinterview his previous subjects. Perlman returned to the infamous slums of Rio de Janeiro to follow four generations over the course of 40 years. He interviewed nearly 2,500 people including his subjects' children and grandchildren. It combines detailed personal testimonies with in-depth analyzes of the urbanization of poverty, public policy implications, and drug trafficking. It also conveys a deep understanding that favelas are not simply slums full of desperation, but communities, in fact many of the residents have remained there by choice. The central theme of Favela is to provide more information on urban poverty and social mobility. It provides compelling counterperspectives that add hope to what is understood about urban poverty in Latin America. He writes using compassion and personal stories to portray broader topics proven by statistical analysis. Perlman's research provided evidence of an overall improvement in living standards and a surprising increase in upward mobility, especially among families with fewer children. However, not all of his subjects manage to escape poverty. It uncovers many innovative social interventions (by community organizers, non-governmental organizations, and international agencies) that, if replicated, could have widespread benefits. Perlman worries that Latin America's emerging democracies have so far failed to fully incorporate their expanding urban populations and produce good enough jobs. But their uplifting reporting from the periphery provides a solid basis for reasoned optimism. F...... middle of paper...... Given the scope of the study (i.e. a 30-year period, a half-dozen neighborhoods, thousands of individual lives), the complexity of the subject matter and the lack of recent ethnographic fieldwork, many of these findings are not fully explained, but informed speculation is provided. Favela touches on several topics pertinent to urban scholars, and considering Brazil's growing economy and changing national infrastructure, studies like this will become increasingly urgent in the coming years. The book provides powerful insights into the feelings, motivations, and perspectives of the population studied. Overall, Favela offers a sensitive and well-documented insight into the world of twenty-first-century urban marginality and calls for greater "sustained engagement." (p. 339), as Perlman states, to match attitudinal trends established in surveys with actors' practices and worldviews.