But Brazil is a country that looks and feels divided, along North-South, working class-middle class lines.
I have been lucky–I was born into the middle class, and books lined the walls.
We focused our search in the old industrial areas south and east of downtown, where decades ago the white middle class followed trolley lines to starter suburbs.
The discursiveness is exhilarating, and nowhere more so than in the chapter "Justice", where Bate ranges from examining the lives of petty officials, the administration of the law throughout the country and the endless litigation of the new middle class, to Falstaff's line "We have heard the chimes at midnight", of which he asks: which chimes were they?
First, abortion is still critical for the middle class in holding the line on single parent births.
After decades of taking money out of the pockets of the poor and middle class in order to line their own pockets and pay for private jets, they are now queuing up to profiteer on our social services and public works.
"This recession has pushed people who were barely into the middle class down below the poverty line.
It was the first car marketed to the middle class, because Henry Ford's assembly line made it cheap to build and relatively affordable to buy.
"This community is middle class, but right on the line," said Brad Sellers, a retired professional basketball player who grew up in Warrensville Heights and is running for mayor.
The authorities refused to talk with the reasonable protesters, who include the pro-European middle class, and so the revolutionary line now predominates.
During the presidential campaign in 2008, the Republican nominee, Senator John McCain of Arizona, set off a fury when he was asked the dividing line between middle class and rich and replied that it was $5 million, a statement he said was intended as a joke.
