Brazil

The Times (UK) Best Books of 2018 - Financial Times Best Books of 2018

"Detailed and deeply reasoned . . . Illuminating, engrossing, and consistently thoughtful." --Larry Rohter, The New York Review of Books

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. --Patrick Wilcken, The Times Literary Supplement

Compelling and insightful . . . One of Schwarcz and Starling's great strengths is their dissection of changing racial identity. --Geoff Dyer, Financial Times

"A thoughtful and profound journey into the soul of Brazil . . . The Brazil that emerges from this book is, indeed, a fascinating, complex, multicolored, contradictory and challenging organism, more like a living being than a political, cultural and geographical entity." --Laurentino Gomes, Folha de Sao Paulo

"We have been in need of a comprehensive history of Brazil, sensitive and grounded in rigorous research, for some time now; a work that would recognize the advancements of the last five centuries but would also deal frankly with the many obstacles inherent in the building of complete social, political, and racial citizenship. Therefore, this extraordinary tour de force by two of the greatest Brazilian historians in actuality is a very pertinent work." --Kenneth Maxwell, founder of the Brazil Studies Program at Harvard University's David Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies

"This book is an unauthorized biography of a complex character named Brazil. It skillfully combines various facets of this character that has been formed and transformed through more than five centuries and is still developing as far as the eye can see." --Boris Fausto, author of A Concise History of Brazil

"We are dealing with an unauthorized biography of Brazil, free of rigid methods of interpretation, of officialisms, and of the concern for praise or condemnation. It is a new interpretive narrative, challenging, and molded in transparent language alien to the usual academic jargon. The reader will recognize his country, complete with its lights and shadows, and will feel encouraged to participate in the adventure that is its construction." --Jose Murilo de Carvalho, author of The Formation of Souls: Imagery of the Republic in Brazil