Great guide to a fascinating country.

When I started this book, all I knew about Brazil were the cliches of carnival, violent favelas, and rain-forest destruction. Sixteen and a half hours later, I feel I have a much better grounding about this vast, diverse and often contradictory nation: that is so little discussed in the west. The author has an obvious deep interest in the country, has interviewed most of its leading figures in over the past two decades, and does a great job of outlining the historical forces that have shaped it, as well as bringing out the challenges and opportunities it faces going forward.

There is a strong focus in the second half of the book on recent economics, unsurprising when you know the author is a writer for the "Economist" magazine. This suited me just fine as I'm more than usually interested in such things, but it may exhaust the patience of a general reader. I would however have liked a bit more "colour commentary" about Brazil's people and culture. There is precious little about the daily lives of its inhabitants beyond the broad categorizations of different social classes.

The narrator is decent.

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Mr. Healy can't pronounce Portuguese

The narrator was so bad at pronouncing Portuguese that it was exceptionally distracting from Michael Reid's discussion. As a book, this was a good introduction to Brazil’s troubled political and economic status, but the performer was just wretched to the point where I almost didn't finish.

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2 people found this helpful