The demands and difficulties of civilized and republican life in a context such as the Brazilian one form the core of the articles collected here, written at different times. This applies from the first and most comprehensive of them, on civilization, citizenship and barbarism, to the more specific one on fascism in its possible Brazilian version, through the treatment of the theme of development from an unusual angle, that of the civilizing process, and through a mixture of more theoretical reflection and very concrete references when speaking precisely of the theme that identifies the book, the "difficult republic". Finally, two essays on Florestan Fernandes and Raymundo Faoro and two final articles, both marked by attention to a basic problem such as temporality, the mode of presence of time.