This text chronicles the chaotic path to what could be one of the greatest natural disasters of modern times: the disappearance of the Atlantic Forest. Based on documentary and scientific resources, the book is a history of Brazil told from an environmental perspective.

This text chronicles the chaotic path to what could be one of the greatest natural disasters of modern times: the disappearance of the Atlantic Forest. A quarter of the size of the Amazon Forest, and the most densely populated region in Brazil, the Atlantic Forest is now the most endangered in the world. It contains a great diversity of life-forms, some of them found nowhere else, as well as the country's largest cities, plantations, mines and industries. Continual clearing is ravaging most of the forested remnants. The story opens with the hunter-gatherers of 12,000 years ago and takes it up to the 1990s - through the invasion of Europeans in the 16th century; the ensuing devastation wrought by such developments as gold and diamond mining, slash-and-burn farming, coffee planting and industrialization; and the desperate battles between conservationists and developers in the late-20th century. More than a history of a tropical forest, or of the relationship between forest and humans, it is also a history of Brazil told from an environmental perspective.