The revisions are nearly completed and we're headed for a publication date in early October for Making Waves: The Continuing Portuguese Adventure. The book is the latest in a series of non-fiction books arising from reflections and travels over the last decade. While it seems to be quite a departure from The Walkable City and Green City, there is a direct link. As I traveled to research them, I kept coming across the Portuguese, who had been there before other Europeans.
As I investigated, two things happened. First, the great story of the Portuguese adventure became clear. Second, I began to remember my own contact with stalwart Portuguese immigrants as a child: people who had come from mainland Portugal, Madeira or the Azores to San Diego and whose children and grandchildren I grew up with.
Other reflections followed. Amazingly, Portuguese descendants in Brazil seemed to have built a multi-racial society where skin colour mattered much less than in the US where "any known blood" was enough to make you a second-class citizen. The Portuguese had also overthrown a dictatorship almost without bloodshed, and the Brazilians appeared to be rebuilding their civil society successfully after decades of dictatorship, also.
The result will be, I hope, a readable account of under-appreciated cultures and societies, which offers some hints of what might be done elsewhere.
Stay tuned for details about a book launch near you!
