A Era das Demolições: Habitações Populares (The Age of Demolition: Public Housing), by Oswaldo Porto Rocha and Lia de Aquino Carvalho is a double work, including texts authored by Oswaldo Porto Rocha and Lia de Aquino Carvalho, both of which are the products of Masters' dissertations in History at the Universidade Federal Fluminense (Federal Fluminense University), which reflect on the rise of the housing problem in Rio de Janeiro in the nineteenth century and the beginning of the twentieth century: its links with industrialization, the movement of labor, the rise of the bourgeoisie, the end of slavery and migratory flows. The authors focus of the problem of affordable housing as a social issue and an indicator of urban transformations generated by broader changes in modes of production, resulting from the requirements of the capitalist industrial system.