Brazil: A Biography

Shortlisted for the Jabuti Prize for the Best Brazilian Book Published Abroad

'Engrossing ... eye-opening ... an enormously refreshing treat' Dominic Sandbrook, Sunday Times

Since Europeans first reached Brazil in 1500 it has been an unfailingsource of extraordinary fascination. More than any other part of the'New World' it displayed both the greatest beauty and grandeur andwitnessed scenes of the most terrible European ferocity. Its nativepeople both revolutionized Europe's ideas of itself and were thensubject to extermination. For white settlers Brazil's opportunitiesseemed endless, for imported black slaves it was a hell on earth.

Brazil: A Biography,written by two of Brazil's leading historians and a bestseller inBrazil itself, is a remarkable attempt to convey the overwhelmingdiversity and challenges of this huge country - larger than thecontiguous USA and still in some regions not fully mapped - from itsorigins to the twenty-first century. The book's major themes are thenear-continuous battles to create both political institutions and socialframeworks that would allow stable growth, legal norms and protectionfor all its citizens. Brazil's failure to achieve these except in thevery short term has been tragic, but even in the 21st century it remainsone of the world's great experiments - creative, harsh, unique and ascompelling a story for its inhabitants as for outsiders.

Reviews

Evocative . . . Schwarcz and Starling adopt what they call a biographical approach: an attempt to tell the collective stories of the generations of Brazilians that have lived . . . They achieve this with flair in their rich evocations of colonial and imperial Brazil . . . Rich and absorbing.