cover image Brazil on the Rise: The Story of a Country Transformed

Brazil on the Rise: The Story of a Country Transformed

Larry Rohter, Palgrave Macmillan, $27 (304p) ISBN 978-0-230-61887-9

In his first book in English, Rohter, a former New York Times bureau chief for Rio de Janeiro, breezes through Brazil's colonial history and then organizes an examination of contemporary events around themes like race, arts, industry, and the Amazon. Brazil, we learn, is a wildly enthralling country with a vast racial background, an enormous amount of agricultural opportunity, and a generally laissez-faire attitude; its influence on the rest of the world is substantial. While Brazil's economy and governance seem to be stabilizing, its people, Rohter argues, are stuck in a pattern of long-held race and class prejudice. Having spent 14 years in Brazil, Rohter is able to share many personal anecdotes, lending his concise effort tremendous color. Obviously an expert on the region, Rohter excels at bringing order to a mass of information about a historically disorderly country. (Sept.)