The author headed for South America at the age of twenty-five with a clear aim "to do something in [his] life." Fascinated by the beauty of quartz crystals in Brazil, he started to collect them enthusiastically and he is now the only collector of giant crystals in the world.
Conquered by their secret power and the perfection of their forms, he penetrated the intimate world of crystals and marveled at the magnificent play of light reflected on their smooth faces. Some of the phenomenal crystals "survived" hundreds of millions of years untouched.

Only slightly smaller in size than the United States, Brazil is the fifth largest country in the world. It is home to exotic Rio de Janeiro, the mighty Amazon River, the world-renowned Carnival, and of course, its shrinking rainforests. A Brief History of Brazil offers a concise yet comprehensive account of the rich and varied history of Brazil, placing the political, economic, and cultural events of today into broad historical context. The book opens with an overview of pre-colonial Brazil and goes on to examine the history of Portuguese exploration, through the early years of the slave trade between Africa and the Americas, and the creation of the largest slaveholding society in the modern world.

This book is in two parts. The first is a text on logic as seen through Richard Martin's eyes. It alone makes this book worth the price. In his 1941 Yale PhD, Martin discovered the theory of virtual sets and relations. The discussion of this theory in chpts. 1&2 is the best there is. (Quine discovered this theory independently while writing up his 1942 Brazil lectures, but never truly did it justice.)