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Rating: 
Summary: Usefulness NEVER goes out of "style"
Review: Beware the temporal snob I always say, as a good colloquial saying never goes out of style. This book is FANTASTIC. I've worked many of the expressions from this book into my conversations with Brazilians and they not only knew what I was talking about, it always produced a great laugh and the question "where does a gringo ever learn to say such things?" From this book I tell ya! CERTAIN (not all) slang expressions do fall from usage, and some new ones are added - does that erase the value of this incredible text? Not for a second. Can you imagine how old our expression "take a hike" is? Or how about "What's up?" (I'm sure it was around before Bugs Bunny said it in 1939) "What's up?" Is as hip now as it was over 60 years ago, as are the expressions used in this book. But it's not about being hip, it's about understand figurative language and being able to express yourself figuratively. That's what this book does for you, and I assure you that as much as people said "that's diesel" 5 years ago, we never needed that expression to begin with (but I doubt we'll ever stop saying "what's up"...case closed). The good ones never die. Buy it! And to you guys who don't like the fact that whatever was said in the latest rap cd isn't in here - deixa de encher o saco, PQP~!
Rating:
Summary: Usefulness NEVER goes out of "style"
Review: Beware the temporal snob I always say, as a good colloquial saying never goes out of style. This book is FANTASTIC. I've worked many of the expressions from this book into my conversations with Brazilians and they not only knew what I was talking about, it always produced a great laugh and the question "where does a gringo ever learn to say such things?" From this book I tell ya! CERTAIN (not all) slang expressions do fall from usage, and some new ones are added - does that erase the value of this incredible text? Not for a second. Can you imagine how old our expression "take a hike" is? Or how about "What's up?" (I'm sure it was around before Bugs Bunny said it in 1939) "What's up?" Is as hip now as it was over 60 years ago, as are the expressions used in this book. But it's not about being hip, it's about understand figurative language and being able to express yourself figuratively. That's what this book does for you, and I assure you that as much as people said "that's diesel" 5 years ago, we never needed that expression to begin with (but I doubt we'll ever stop saying "what's up"...case closed). The good ones never die. Buy it! And to you guys who don't like the fact that whatever was said in the latest rap cd isn't in here - deixa de encher o saco, PQP~!
Rating: 
Summary: 30 Year Old Out of Date Usage
Review: I am truly astonished at the amount of research the authors put into this text; I would have considered it a bargain at triple the price. It covers a very wide range of levels of informality ranging from merely "colloquial" all the way down to "vulgar."Many of my Brazilian friends have commented that the book is accurate and the examples quite humorous. If you are studying Portuguese, you must have a copy of this book.
Rating:
Summary: This book's the bomb
Review: I must disagree with the other reviewer who said this book was out of date. This book is amazing and super-useful. I just came back from a year in Brasil (I returned in January of 2001) and I carried this book everywhere. It was very helpful when it came to reading, drinking and brandishing insults. At first glance the book does look old. It looks like it might be xeroxed pages from a typewriter, but after a couple moments with the book all my friends were trying to steal it from me. It made me feel local so much faster than any other book, tape or video I had packed in my arsenal. HIGHLY RECOMMENDED.
Rating: 
Summary: Definitive and impressively comprehensive
Review: The authors make a valiant attempt to compile a comprehensive register of Brazilian slang but by its very nature is flawed due to the impossibility to keep up with the rapid pace at which languages change. The authors neglect to include commonly used expressions like "pagar um mico" and "soltar a franga" but is, overall, the impressive result of an obviously tremendous amount of hard work. Despite some inescapable shortcomings the book prooves itself to be one of the most definitive reference guides to a side of Brazilian Portuguese too often excluded by mainstream textbooks.
Rating:
Summary: Excellent but begging for an update!
Review: This wonderful and necessary dictionary is a work of linguistic greatness that has hundreds and hundreds of commonly used terms, some of which I would daresay have slipped from the slang category to just the informal or colloquial usage categories since the book was published in 1983. Being the experts they are, I'm sure that even the authors would agree that the dictionary needs updating. The first rule of slang and informal usages is that they constantly come into existence, with dozens of new common expressions each year. If the authors are out there somewhere, I am sure that they would love to add hundreds of terms and phrases that have found their way into popular culture since they put out this excellent opus, whose contents are still highly valid.
Just to provide one example, the very first word I looked up was "rolar", a verb you see constantly nowadays in a variety of differently nuanced means. It's not to be found in the dictionary, but afterwards most of the terms I sought out were there. I have been adding to the dictionary myself, by penciling in the new slang I come across, in case anyone ever asks to borrow my dictionary, or if I run across new words in the future. This and the dictionary's large size are its only disadvantages: there are huge spaces between each definition (which are printed in a humongous courier font), and as with all dictionaries, I prefer smaller size (these dictionaries take up tons of room in your home if you're a translator!) Recommended!
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