A Concise History of Brazil (Cambridge Concise Histories) |
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A Concise History of Brazil (Cambridge Concise Histories)
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by Boris Fausto and Arthur Brakel
Sales Rank: 418586
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List Price: $23.99
$22.53
At Amazon
on 6-17-2008.
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Features
Cover Type: Paperback with 362 pages
Published by: Cambridge University Press April 28, 1999
Written in: English
ISBN 10 Number: 052156526X
ISBN 13 Number: 978-0521565264
Book Dimensions:
8.4 x 5.5 x 0.8 inches
Weighs: 1 pounds
From Publishers Weekly
It's no mean feat to tell the unruly story of a country as large, diverse and divided as Brazil in one volume of narrative history. But Fausto succeeds admirably in presenting facts, figures, events and influences in an orderly, palatable fashion. Expansion led the Portuguese to Brazil in 1500, when Pedro Alvares Cabral first sighted the country's coast. From the beginning, Brazil was totally dependent on slavery, first enslaving Indians and then importing Africans to work one or another of the labor-intensive aspects of the boom-or-bust economy. In 1888, Slavery was reluctantly abolished under heavy pressure from Britain, which was then playing a major role in attempting to help Brazil recover from its latest financial disaster. Although people of color outnumbered whites for hundreds of years, there were no slave uprisings or effective abolitionist movements to force the issue. Brazil's independence from Portugal happened in much the same haphazard way as the country's slip into dictatorship. Sao Paulo University professor Fausto has written a nuts-and-bolts account that will serve general readers as a navigable port of entry into the history and life of one of the world's most culturally rich nations. photographs not seen by PW.
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.
From Library Journal
A professor of political science at the University of Sao Paulo, Fausto is one of the most articulate, well-known historians of 20th-century Brazil; his numerous historical publications form an important part of the country's historiography. He recently published a college-level textbook in Portuguese on Brazilian history, and though there are differences, many sections of this English-language volume are similar to or direct translations from that book. The volume is in narrative style with a focus on traditional history, and it is valuable for introducing theoretical ideas not found in similar textbooks by non-Brazilians. Fausto's style, while somewhat simplistic, is refreshing. It has been many years since a Brazilian scholar published a textbook history of Brazil in English, and this long-overdue book will be of interest to both academic and public libraries.?Mark L. Grover, Brigham Young Univ. Lib., Provo, UT
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Reader Reviews
This is the most comprehensive recent history of Brazil by a Brazilian to be translated into English. Its having been written by a Brazilian academic makes it a useful read for those who are also reading books by Americans (Skidmore, Eakin, etc.) But this book founders on Fausto's deep historical understanding and thorough research. There was no factoid too minute or political movement too mundane to leave out. Result: only the most tenacious reader will be able to plod through this leaden work. Arthur Brakel's translation is mediocre, particularly in the early pages. The prose gets clunky and uses a lot of academic words oddly out of place ("insure" vice "ensure", a situation always "obtains" rather than exists). The maps are a major failure, as the first one is on page 86 and is outdated and inaccurate (failing to show either the country's capital, Brasilia, or states such as Toncatins) yet showing useless details of railway spurs. The next edition needs a dozen strong historical maps, showing the progression from colonial captaincies to modern state. Maps on the conflicts with Uruguay and Paraguay are particularly lacking. The overabundance of detail about obscure 18th and 19th century political movements merely bogs down the reader. For despite the author's disclaimer in the Preface, this work is really is a chronological narrative only thinly based on underlying themes (such as slavery and regionalism). While Fausto claims to reject "inertia theory" of Brazilian history, the book is really a testament to those ideas. The book is not a complete failure, there are strong and detailed discussions of the coffee economy, a good (though mapless) description of the war with Paraguay, and a particularly insightful discussion of Brazil's long-term, complicated relationship with Great Britain. The author deliberately made the arbitrary and unhelpful decision to eschew discussion of cultural themes because, he claims, they deserve their own book. Thus readers are deprived of essential material on art, sexuality, family, and sport that are integral to understanding Brazil. These themes are more usefully described in Eakin's book. Sao Paulo's "Modern Art Week", one of the crucial events in Brazil's modern history, is not mentioned even once. The author is excessively Sao Paulo-centric. Most of the text focuses on minor details of Sao Paulo's development to the exclusion of other regions. While Fausto provides more detail, clarification, and insight than Eakin or Skidmore on many topics, such as the impact of positivism on military thinking, the book gets bogged down in dry recitiation of economic statistics without real analysis and in discussion of minor historical events without real import. It is finally defeated by its dry, uninspired prose, by a parade of chronological details and economic data that make great watershed events and minor political hiccups seem equally (un)important.
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A Concise History of Brazil (Cambridge Concise Histories)
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Updated on 6-17-2008.
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