As a young journalist at the Brazil Herald from 1979-81, Stephen G. Bloom spent his formative years working in Rio's seedy Lapa district, surrounded by expatriates, drug runners, and pornographers. Bloom shares the wild, untamed history of this Brazil-based English-language newspaper in The Brazil Chronicles. The newspaper was a breeding ground for a different kind of storyteller - audacious risk-takers who told madcap tales of Amazon plantations, Confederate emigres, and lost Indian tribes. Several major journalistic talents cut their teeth at the Brazil Herald, including acclaimed New York Times correspondent Tad Szulc, Huffington Post CEO Eric Hippeau, and the notorious Gonzo journalist Hunter S. Thompson.

Drawing from extensive research and over 150 interviews with his former colleagues, Bloom's exploration of the Brazil Herald is both entertaining and academically rigorous. The book also doubles as a coming-of-age memoir, following the young Bloom as he embarks on his quest to be a reporter, relocating to an entirely new country where he did not speak the local language, to pursue under-the-radar stories. His firsthand experience with the Brazil Herald allows him to provide an insider, eye-witness account of the paper's colorful history, transporting the reader to its sweltering newsroom and delving into the lives of its staff members.

Even as he weaves between personal narrative, history, and accounts from other reporters, it remains clear who the book's main character is: the trailblazing newspaper itself.