The Brazil Reader: History, Culture, Politics (The Latin America Readers) - Softcover

"Whether ingested in short sips or long draughts, The Brazil Reader has an accumulative weight, breadth, and durability. . . . [I]t's a book that offers an intelligent and up-to-date survey of a vital and vibrant country. It's hard to imagine how we were able to get along without it." -- Bondo Wyszpolski * Brazzil * "Duke University Press has just brought out . . . the closest thing to a voyage around `the great green elbow' that one of its novelists called his rich and varied country. The book shimmers with every type of essay, historiography, and literary tidbit." * Rain City Review * "A stellar collection of texts on Brazilian history and contemporary life. No ordinary reader, this volume goes below the surface to introduce an American audience to Brazil's complexities and diversity." * Foreign Affairs * "The Reader cannot fail to impress. . . . The specialist, the activist, the artist and the anonymous all find a space in The Brazil Reader, creating what the editors describe as a `balance of voices.' In summary, for the well-heeled scholar or the curious undergraduate The Brazil Reader will present possibilities, challenges and thought-provoking reading." -- Jane-Marie Collins * Bulletin of Hispanic Studies * "A worthy successor to the pioneering Peru Reader, this volume provides a comprehensive guide to Brazil's history and culture from the Portuguese colonial past to the postmodern present. Defty crossing disciplines and integrating elite and popular realms, The Brazil Reader is certain to please both the serious student and the general reader."-Gil Joseph, Yale University "What gives The Brazil Reader its special cachet is freshness, sensitivity, and empathy in its diversity of perspectives on twentieth-century Brazil, from the top down, from the bottom up, and from somewhere in the middle."-Stanley J. Stein, Princeton University "The Reader cannot fail to impress. . . . The specialist, the activist, the artist and the anonymous all find a space in The Brazil Reader, creating what the editors describe as a `balance of voices.' In summary, for the well-heeled scholar or the curious undergraduate The Brazil Reader will present possibilities, challenges and thought-provoking reading." - Jane-Marie Collins, Bulletin of Hispanic Studies "The Brazil Reader is simply indispensable. . . ." - Julio Cesar Pino, Hispanic American Historical Review "Whether ingested in short sips or long draughts, The Brazil Reader has an accumulative weight, breadth, and durability. . . . [I]t's a book that offers an intelligent and up-to-date survey of a vital and vibrant country. It's hard to imagine how we were able to get along without it." - Bondo Wyszpolski, Brazzil "Duke University Press has just brought out . . . the closest thing to a voyage around `the great green elbow' that one of its novelists called his rich and varied country. The book shimmers with every type of essay, historiography, and literary tidbit." - Rain City Review "A stellar collection of texts on Brazilian history and contemporary life. No ordinary reader, this volume goes below the surface to introduce an American audience to Brazil's complexities and diversity." - Foreign Affairs

Bordering all but two of South America's other nations and by far Latin America's largest country, Brazil differs linguistically, historically, and culturally from Spanish America. Its indigenous peoples share the country with descendants of Portuguese conquerors and the Africans they imported to work as slaves, along with more recent immigrants from southern Europe, Japan, the Middle East, and elsewhere. Capturing the scope of this country's rich diversity and distinction as no other book has done-with more than a hundred entries from a wealth of perspectives-The Brazil Reader offers a fascinating guide to Brazilian life, culture, and history. Complementing traditional views with fresh ones, The Brazil Reader's historical selections range from early colonization to the present day, with sections on imperial and republican Brazil, the days of slavery, the Vargas years, and the more recent return to democracy. They include letters, photographs, interviews, legal documents, visual art, music, poetry, fiction, reminiscences, and scholarly analyses. They also include observations by ordinary residents, both urban and rural, as well as foreign visitors and experts on Brazil. Probing beneath the surface of Brazilian reality-past and present-The Reader looks at social behavior, women's lives, architecture, literature, sexuality, popular culture, and strategies for coping with the travails of life in a country where the affluent live in walled compounds to separate themselves from the millions of Brazilians hard-pressed to find food and shelter. Contributing to a full geographic account-from the Amazon to the Northeast and the Central-South-of this country's singular multiplicity, many pieces have been written expressly for this volume or were translated for it, having never previously been published in English. This second book in The Latin America Readers series will interest students, specialists, travelers for both business and leisure, and those desiring an in-depth introduction to Brazilian life and culture.