Customer Reviews

The New Brazil

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This book is a very good introduction for those not familiar with Brazilian history and the evolution of its economical and political systems. Even though the book lays down the foundation for understanding the transformation that has been taken place during the last 15 years, its approach is too macroeconomic and misses many details (including the stratospheric interest rates charged by credit cards -150 to 200% a year- which hinders the purchasing power of Brazilian middle class, the serious deficiencies of its education systems and the barriers to access public universities, etc.).

There is little about the Brazilian agribusiness model and all the indigenous research behind it (led by Embrapa); the industrial strength that has allowed aviation manufacturer Embraer compete with Boeing and Airbus; and the reasons behind Brazil's successful energy model, which includes sustainable ethanol that already has reached a 50% market share of the gasoline market.

The latter is just briefly covered, and shame on Mr. Roett, two out of the three paragraphs dealing with the Brazilian ethanol industry and its flex-fuel cars are almost a "cut and paste" from the Wikipedia article "Ethanol fuel in Brazil" with no credits to the source. The recently published Brazil on the Rise: The Story of a Country Transformed explains much better and in deeper detail the reasons behind Brazil's recent take off in its chapters 6 and 7.

In this book, Professor Roett is able to summarize the history of Brazil in only 150 pages and make it readable and enjoyable by the broad public. Particularly, tThis book is an excellent analysis of the critical juncture lived by Brazil over the last decade.

The New Brazil is as good as it gets as an introduction to Brazilian history and politics. Its objective is not to analyze extensively, but to present succinctly. Other books by Roett analyze Brazil's politics in more detail, in case the reader is interested.

As one of the panelists at a book launch event aptly commented, writing a succint and thorough history of Brazil in 150 pages would have been deemed impossible until recently, but Riordan Roett has done it (based on remarks by Dr. Margaret Daly Hayes, September 29, 2010, Johns Hopkins-SAIS). The brilliance of this book is precisely that it covers so much in so few pages and that it gives the reader a rich overview of Brazil's trajectory to a position of increasing global importance. For more information on the book, see the review in the January/February 2011 issue of Foreign Affairs (available online).

If you only associate Brazil with soccer, samba and "The Girl from Ipanema," adjust your thinking. Brazil inaugurated its first female president, Dilma Rousseff, in 2011, and it will host the 2014 World Cup and the 2016 Olympic Games. But even more significantly, Brazil has become a global economic powerhouse. Riordan Roett explains how it all happened, from Brazil's status as a neglected Portuguese colony to its 20th-century military dictatorship to its modern role as a commercially influential nation. Published just prior to Rousseff's election, Roett's slightly stolid book ends with former President Luiz Inácio (Lula) da Silva's second term and leaves you wanting to know more, though it reveals in exhaustive detail how this dynamic democracy has come so far so fast. Roett's tough-going textbook style can be dense, but getAbstract promises you will learn a lot about Brazil, the 21st century's "crafty superpower."

The book is brand new and arrived exactly when it said it would. I would buy items from this seller again any day.

When I picked up this book, I did not know much about Brazil's history but like many I have been reading more and more about the country presently. The major context is the BRIC concept, meaning the four so-called rising nations of Brazil, Russia, India, and China. BRIC and its increasing importance is the book's starting off point, explaining how the term was coined and why it matters. Then the book delves into Brazil's history, primarily through a political and economic frame. As other reviewers have noted, many aspects of Brazil's social history are not discussed. The political changes which went from colony, to empire, to lurching back and forth between democracy and military control is interesting. Brazil's stability is relatively recent, really taking hold after 1985 and prolonged periods of the military reasserting control when democratic governments failed. The book covers these many twists and turns but spends the most time on the Cardoso and successor Lula governments which really stabilized Brazil economically and politically. The country is extremely important globally, with a growing economy, vast resources, and continental leadership. The book ends by discussing some ways in which Brazil has asserted that growing role including pushing for the G20 and getting involved in foreign affairs issues of global interest, such as Iran. Brazil's role will continue to grow and watching and understanding if the country can maintain both its internal and external development will be made easier for non-Brazilians who read this book.