Initially released in 1958, this book, Porto's first volume of {cro nicas}, gathered 60 pieces previously published between 1952 and 1956. The present edition includes all those 60, along with pieces published in {A casa demolida}, a collection that came out in 1963. Unlike their predecessors, this edition adds information regarding the date and the venue of each {cro nica's} initial publication. Using the pseudonym Stanislaw Ponte Preta, which had been inspired by Serafim Ponte Grande, the protagonist in Oswald de Andrade's 1933 canonical novel, this Carioca satirist displays in his {cro nicas} the same sharp wit and merciless sarcasm whether writing about cinema, theater, television, newspapers or magazines. A member of a very prolific and dexterous group of {cronistas,} including Paulo Mendes Campos, Rubem Braga and Carlos Drummond de Andrade, Porto's style employs classical assets of the genre: the quick-paced storytelling of well-balanced drama along with convincing irony and unbroken suspense. His wide thematic scope includes texts on his domestic servant's trouble with modern kitchen appliances (p. 138-140), one on singer-songwriter Dolores Duran's untimely death (p. 156-159), and one on the division of belongings between a couple getting divorced (p. 195-197). Porto's writings illuminate with humor and wisdom the many different aspects of the socio-political changes and dynamics of Brazilian society and its ethos from the 1940s to the 1960s.