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- this is not a field guide
- Birds in Brazil
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Birds in Brazil
Helmut Sick
Manufacturer: Princeton University Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
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ASIN: 0691085692 |
Book Description
Here is a substantially revised and updated English-language version of the only comprehensive, scientific treatment of Brazil's 1635 bird species. Written by the then dean of Brazilian ornithologists and published in Brazil in 1985, it not only lists every individual Brazilian species and provides detailed accounts for most of them but also gives an extensive treatment of the characteristics of each bird family found in the country. In addition, it analyzes the composition of Brazil's avifauna and relates it to the country's geography.
Customer Reviews:
this is not a field guide.......2004-12-06
I read the other review and was deceived. The other reviewer made it sound like a field guide comparing it to Peterson. NO!!!! There are a total of 45 color plates covering less than 500 of the about 1500 Brazilian birds and some of these plates are black and white.
Birds in Brazil.......2000-10-16
Birds in Brazil is a big book, beautifully produced on quality paper. It is exhaustive but never exhausting on the topic of Brazilian birds . The color illustrations are beautiful, but unfortunately they are separate from the text about the birds. That is the book's only fault. The text is in smooth and enticing English, and where the same birds are to be found migrating to the United States, the information is quite comparable in completion and interest to the American field guides of Roger T. Peterson. That leads me to believe that the information about birds that we don't experience will be equally accurate. This book is captivating and well worth the price. It is a coffee-table style book that we will be proud to use and to display.
Customer Reviews:
Iconoclastic Management Book.......2007-07-28
Maverick is a valuable management book because of many of the counterintuitive ("You just couldn't do that!") concepts that Semler actually implements. It's value lies as much in showing "Well, he did just do that" as it does in espousing theory - without the implementation, it would just be too out there...
Some of the counterintuitive:
- Let managers set their own pay. And publish publicly.
- Don't fire people during a strike. Or even take attendence.
- Get rid of extra management (don't "hoard" talent) but fund their new startups if need be.
There's much more, as well as some less controversial advice ("Treat people with dignity" & "Rotate your managers"), but it's best to read the book yourself to get the stories with the advice.
Great Book.......2007-07-01
Very fun and interesting, and we can learn a great deal by using this story as examples and lessons.
Great Book.......2007-02-22
Learn from the experience of this Brazilian entrepreneur that goes against normal business models and managed to sustained in the market with a highly profitable company.
It is fun to read, it is a business story and not a business history or theory. If you like to read about business, if you are interested in opening your company or just if you think you want to learn about others real experiences, read this book!!
The Pursuit of Happiness.......2006-12-25
I read both of Ricardo Semler's books, Maverick! and Seven Day Weekend prior to watching the film about Enron. As a 22 year old dreamer, idealist, pragmatist, and economics student, I feel blessed to have been given the opportunity to see the opposite ends of the capitalist spectrum. There's so much knowledge to be learned from the two companies, Enron and Semco. Semco is everything Enron wasn't and is making profit while empowering its employees like no other company on the planet. Business does not have to be analogous to war. Enron's motto was `ask why' and nobody ever did, Ricardo Semler's motto is `ask why' and he hasn't stopped asking. Ricardo Semler will be regarded as the most influential CEO of the 21st century, mark my words.
Believing in others.......2006-11-10
I think the purpose of the book is to illustrate that if we trust each other and we discuss our diferences we generate synergy and cohesion in any group making it easier for its memeber to achieve a given goal.
Customer Reviews:
Packs a punch. This is a rare and complete book that reads like a text. A must have if interested in Brazil in any form........2007-07-20
Only the highest mark for this outstanding work. If you're interested in Brazil, this is the book you want. Thank you Joeseph Page for this fantastic novel that could easily qualify as a sociological journal. This is without a doubt my favorite book in years.
Informative, but an outsider's partial understanding.......2007-05-04
I've lived in Brazil, and read many books about various aspects of Brazil's people, economy, history, government, military and culture. This book contains a lot of information that I hadn't known, and that I find fascinating. So it's well worth reading.
But it's a foreigner's view; Page has visited many times, knows many Brazilians, and is married to a Brazilian. Even so, I found many of his comments and views unrecognizable to me; perhaps one must live in the country and work there, in the local economy, paid in Brazilian currency and working with ordinary Brazilians, to absorb various subtleties of life in Brazil and of interaction among ordinary Brazilians, that Page omits, or may even be unaware of. For example, his account of economic activity in Brazil makes it clear that connections are vital for business success and that many of the most successful firms in Brazil are family firms. But what he doesn't say, surprisingly in view of the fact that he's a professor of law in the US, is that Brazilian commercial law is so different from commercial law in the US that it is very hard, and takes a very long time, to get a commercial dispute settled through the Brazilian legal system. So, as a practical fact, any sensible business owner in Brazil depends on family connections and close friends to straighten out and resolve problems involving contracts.
Page also plays down the size and vitality of Brazil's middle class. This seems to be because of his own political views, but it seriously misrepresents the way Brazil actually functions. A good example of the true Brazil of today is the aircraft company EMBRAER, which I recently saw referred to as "the Boeing of regional jets"; indeed, right now in the US I keep seeing EMBRAER turboprops and EMBRAER regional jets in use all over the US by a lot of airlines. EMBRAER started out as a Brazilian government initiative, but became truly successful after it was privatized. I knew a number of the engineers and technicians who helped to found EMBRAER and make it successful, and they were neither members of the elite nor from impoverished backgrounds. A very few came from rich families and a very few came from impoverished backgrounds, but the large majority were from families of professionals or families that owned small businesses. What they had in common was extremely high intelligence, a good education, and determination to make EMBRAER succeed in the commercial market, which it has. Most of them got their primary, secondary and university education in the public educational system, which is much better, at least in the Southeast, than Page gives it credit for. People I have since encountered, from similar backgrounds, are at the heart of the steady effort in Brazil to master nuclear technology.
US government treatment of Brazil and the government of Brazil has often been shabby, to put it kindly. Everyone I knew in Brazil welcomed Americans, including me, provided we identified with Brazilian views on international relations, rather than with US government views. I don't know how many times, but it was many, while I lived there, that the local CIA station chief visited me so that I could tell him what lay behind some grievance that had Brazilians badmouthing the US government; he lived in an American compound, drove an American automobile, and was regarded with deep suspicion by almost all the ordinary Brazilians he met.
As for the destruction of rainforest and the awful treatment of the few remaining clans of wild native Americans, it is no worse, and in most ways less destructive, than the way in which the European settlers of North America treated indigenous people and despoiled the environment. Many Brazilians, possibly most of them, resent being lectured by people from the US and Europe about how Brazilians should conduct themselves in the Amazon basin, in the Pantanal, in the remaining fragments of the original coastal forest, in the extensive grasslands of Goias and in the part of the Northeast that is subject to frequent drought. Almost all the Brazilians I knew when I lived there were as aware as people in the US and Europe of the ecological and social problems involved in opening up the backlands. But what would you have had them do? Turn 3/4 of Brazil into a wilderness preserve? impossible. I think Brazil has done quite well to preserve its ecology and the culture of its remaining native Americans as well as it has, and, what's more, Brazilians are still learning in these topics, just as we are, and the record is improving steadily.
In summary, Prof. Page's portrayal of Brazil is analogous to what I would expect to find in a book by Jacques Chirac purporting to explain the United States to French readers; there are a lot of good facts here, but a conceptual disconnect.
A realists look at Brazil.......2007-01-10
This is a wonderful book and a must-read for anyone who wishes to either live in Brazil or to travel in Brazil.
It covers Brazil's contemprary history in depth and from the optic of a realist. It is beautifully written and pulls no punches about the things in Brazil's history which are challenging Brazil today as it struggles to take it's place on the world satge as an emerging economic power.
Sadly the book's coverage misses out on the ascension of Lula to the presidency, but this matters not a jot, as the book's wide sweep through Brazil's recent past is compelling in its clarity of opinion as to the social pressures Brazil faces.
Thoughout the book Brazil is referred to as a paradox in all senses, and as anyone who has ever spent time in Brazil will tell you - that is it's wonder and it's power.
A great read.......2007-01-05
This is just first class - entertaining and informative. It really does stand out among books about Brazil. Some aspects of the book are a little out of date now which is a shame. However what it still manages to do is to give you a feel for Brazilians and Brazil that is lacking in many other books. The insights feel authentic.
Great, interesting, and informative book!.......2006-06-29
This book really gives the reader a balanced and unbiased view of brazil. After reading it you will have a much better appreication for the culture and life of Brazil and have some understanding into the people of this amazing continent. It is informative without being dry, though it is long and only for the person who is truely interesting in learning, not someone who just wants to visit Rio, lie on the beaches, and find good food. I highly recomend this book!
Book Description
The Amazon is not what it seems. As Hugh Raffles shows us in this captivating and innovative book, the world's last great wilderness has been transformed again and again by human activity. In Amazonia brings to life an Amazon whose allure and reality lie as much, or more, in what people have made of it as in what nature has wrought. It casts new light on centuries of encounter while describing the dramatic remaking of a sweeping landscape by residents of one small community in the Brazilian Amazon. Combining richly textured ethnographic research and lively historical analysis, Raffles weaves a fascinating story that changes our understanding of this region and challenges us to rethink what we mean by "nature."
Raffles draws from a wide range of material to demonstrate--in contrast to the tendency to downplay human agency in the Amazon--that the region is an outcome of the intimately intertwined histories of humans and nonhumans. He moves between a detailed narrative that analyzes the production of scientific knowledge about Amazonia over the centuries and an absorbing account of the extraordinary transformations to the fluvial landscape carried out over the past forty years by the inhabitants of Igarapé Guariba, four hours downstream from the nearest city.
Engagingly written, theoretically inventive, and vividly illustrated, the book introduces a diverse range of characters--from sixteenth-century explorers and their native rivals to nineteenth-century naturalists and contemporary ecologists, logging company executives, and river-traders. A natural history of a different kind, In Amazonia shows how humans, animals, rivers, and forests all participate in the making of a region that remains today at the center of debates in environmental politics.
Customer Reviews:
A great read.......2004-06-24
This beautifully written book won the 2003 Victor Turner Prize for Ethnographic Writing, a big deal in US anthropology. When you read it you can see why, as it really succeeds in bringing this fascinating region to life. It is lyrically written, and often both funny and sad. It is very personal in its account of the author's experience in the Amazon and of the people that he knows there, and it is also very informative about the region's history and culture. A quote on the book rightly says that "it has a great deal to offer those knowing everything or nothing about the Amazon." I agree: Highly recommended!
Interesting but a tough read........2004-06-01
From the first chapter: "I am preoccupied by a range of questions in the politics of nature that draw me to explore the fullness and multiplicity of nature as a domain marked both by an active and irreducible materiality and by a similarly irreducible discusivity-a domain with complex agency. In addition, this is a book of intimacies, an account of the differential relationships of affective and often physical proximity between humans, and between humans and non-humans. Such 'tense and tender ties' are themselves the sites and occasions for the condensations I examine here. Indeed, they are the constitutive matter of these locations" (p. 8).
The author, Hugh Raffles, apparently has three main goals in this book. The first is to discuss the significance of man-made canals in the Brazilian Amazon. Many of these canals were cut and dug by hand, and they opened up areas for settlement and trade that otherwise wouldn't have been so open. What appeared to 19th century explorers and naturalists to be "nature" was actually nature modified by man well before the era of steam powered ships and digging machines. A second goal, related to the first, is to give a fairly detailed example of the history of a particular man-made canal area, Igarape Guariba, that illustrates the idea of "natural history" in the sense of the history of a local natural area that has been changed over time through complex interactions between humans and nature and between humans and other humans. Such details provide an intimacy of acquaintance with Amazonia that is missed in larger-scale histories. A third goal is to discuss historical changes in European views of the relationship between man and nature, and the issue of environmental determinism of culture.
The book was of interest to me since I have visited the upper Amazon in Peru, and paddled through man-made canals similar to those that Raffles describes. And I am generally interested in Amazonian nature and native cultures. As it turned out, I was not as enthusiastic about this book as I had hoped to be. On the plus side, Raffles' narrative description-based on interviews of natives-of the history of a particular Amazonian tributary and its canals, and the families that made them, was written clearly enough, and was interesting. His discussion of trading patterns and land use in Amazonia was also interesting. On the negative side, Raffles' theoretical discussions were often tedious and hard to understand. He uses lots of rare words and complex sentences. I am not unaccustomed to reading academic writing. In fact, I have done quite a bit of it myself. But if a graduate student had turned in this manuscript to me as a doctoral dissertation, I would have required many parts of it to be re-written in plain English before I would have approved it. If you are interested in Amazonia and you have a very large vocabulary and like to use it to decipher sentences that most people would not understand at all, then you might like this book. In my view, if I have to read a sentence more than twice to understand it, then the sentence was badly written. There were many such cases in this book. This book has a number of interesting ideas. It is too bad that one has to work so hard to get them.
If you want to read a really interesting book about the Amazon as it was 150 years ago, I highly recommend A Naturalist on the River Amazons, by Henry Walter Bates. Bates was an English naturalist who spent 11 years exploring and collecting plant and insect and animal samples on the Amazon in the mid-1800s. His book is interesting for his interactions with the local people--both the natives and the Portuguese colonialists--as well as for its discussion and drawings of tropical nature. Bates' book is a major historical document of the Amazon, and it is quite interesting and well-written. After you have read Bates, you might want to read Raffles' Chapter 5 on Bates, titled "The Uses of Butterflies." Raffles discusses the historical context and significance of Bates and his work, which will add to your appreciation of Bates' book. However, be warned, to get through Raffles' chapter on Bates you will have to get through passages like this one:
"Scientific practice turns out to be a conjunctural negotiation of emergent and relational knowledges. Amazonians' understandings of the forest mediated by their assessments of the institutional resources and priorities of the visitor enter into fluid dialogue with Bates' own conflicted allegiance to natural historical systematics as mediated by all the complications stirred up in his Amazon experience" (p. 142).
I recommend this book for college professors and graduate students who specialize in the history of Amazonia.
Natural history for the 21st century.......2004-01-06
Amazonia is arguably the heartland of modern Western environmentalism-the region where many fundamental ecological insights were first proposed and honed, the site of some of the most violent and wrenching contemporary conflicts over natural resource exploitation and conservation, and the beloved core of a planetary nature conceived all too often as a battered and sputtering "spaceship Earth." In Amazonia casts a fresh and provocative light on this vital and contested terrain.
Nature in this account is not a primeval zone either threatened or threatening, but rather a dynamic and heterogeneous web of places and relations, saturated with the affinities and intimacies, the memories and yearnings, of everyday life. Tracking back and forth between multiple sites and scales, In Amazonia takes up a series of human engagements through which the very nature of the Amazon has been elaborated-exploratory expeditions, natural history collections, ecological experimentations, and embodied practices of occupation and development.
Raffles writes both with and against the literary traditions of Western naturalism, suggestively presenting the Amazon itself as an assemblage or collection of living objects. The result is a novel and enlightening mode of "natural history," one that places at center stage both the accidents and the affects that have made modern Amazonia.
Ultimately it is the quality of Raffles' writing that makes this volume such a captivating and enlightening read. With great skill and delicacy, Raffles spins out a narrative that turns at every turn on contingency-on the myriad and unpredictable accidents of biography, politics and philosophy that lend to places their significance and texture.
It is in such workings that nature itself finds a measure of agency, ecological chains of consequence turning fields to swamps, dropping houses and fruit trees into river beds, forcing fish to move from one place to another. Raffles is candid about the contingencies that led him through the path of his own writing, from the seductions of his characters to the personal traumas that directed him to the question of Amazonian passions in the first place.
As an heir to the vexing legacies of Western environmentalism myself, I found that In Amazonia struck many an unanticipated chord. How many of us have shared Amazonian dreams unknowing?
This is an amazing book!.......2004-01-04
This is an amazing book - at once engaging, entertaining and challenging. I can understand why it won two awards for ethnographic writing at the AAA. It is a testament to the possibility of combining beautifully written prose, interesting stories and sophisticated theoretical insights under the same cover, making it a great read for those with a general interest in Natural History, the environment and Amazonia, as well as for the most theoretically-minded academics interested in a sophisticated exploration of the complex relationships between nature, culture and power. Indeed, I used this book in a graduate seminar that I taught at Stanford and my students selected it as the best of 12 ethnographies they read during the course. The book has also been thoroughly enjoyed by non-academics, including my sister, who is a physician. In short In Amazonia is a tremendously worthwhile read.
Beautiful writing; compelling anthropology.......2004-01-02
"In Amazonia" tells an engaging and well-researched story of epic proportions. Raffles' lyrical style draws the reader close to the narrative but stops short of romanticizing. Appropriate for academic research or an interested layperson. Highly recommended!
Amazon.com
"When individuals are being tortured and everyone knows about it and no one seems able to do a thing to help," Lawrence Weschler writes, "primordial mysteries at the root of human community come under assault as well." Overthrowing oppressive regimes is not enough to resolve the crisis; the persecutors must also acknowledge what they have done. "True forgiveness is achieved in community.... It is history working itself out as grace, but it can only be accomplished in truth."
A Miracle, A Universe brings together two long nonfiction pieces, originally published in the New Yorker, which examine how citizens of Brazil and Uruguay have worked to "settle accounts" with their former torturers. Weschler uses historical background to supplement his powerful eyewitness reportage and interviews, bearing witness to those who seek to break through official denials of government atrocity. The efforts to build a democratic society in which people can have faith have rarely been portrayed with as much immediacy and insight as Weschler brings to these articles.
Book Description
During the past fifteen years, one of the most vexing issues facing fledgling transitional democracies around the world—from South Africa to Eastern Europe, from Cambodia to Bosnia—has been what to do about the still-toxic security apparatuses left over from the previous regime. In this now-classic and profoundly influential study, the New Yorker's Lawrence Weschler probes these dilemmas across two gripping narratives (set in Brazil and Uruguay, among the first places to face such concerns), true-life thrillers in which torture victims, faced with the paralysis of the new regime, themselves band together to settle accounts with their former tormentors.
"Disturbing and often enthralling."—New York Times Book Review
"Extraordinarily moving. . . . Weschler writes brilliantly."—Newsday
"Implausible, intricate and dazzling."—Times Literary Supplement
"As Weschler's interviewees told their tales, I paced agitatedly, choked back tears. . . . Weschler narrates these two episodes with skill and tact. . . . An inspiring book."—George Scialabba, Los Angeles Weekly
Customer Reviews:
A book to go back to again and again.......2006-03-14
On March 15, 1979, General João Baptista Figuereido assumed power as the fifth military president of Brazil and extended an amnesty for all political crimes, both by state security agents and by opponents to the regime. While this amnesty assured there would be no trials for human rights abusers, ironically, it provided an opportunity for the most serious movement to challenge the practice of torture by the regime itself, that of the Brasil Nunca Mais project. It is the story of this project that Lawrence Weschler narrates in the first half of this book. Weschler explains how, during a very limited period of access, the members of the Brasil Nunca Mais project team were able to photocopy the carefully catalogued archives of the Supreme Military Court in order to make them public to the world. They filled a void in Brazil in taking up activities that the state never would- mainly that of telling the truth about this dark period in Brazilian history. Of course, the resulting report, Brasil Nunca Mais, speaks for itself. But Weschler's account of how it came to be is illuminating and as relevant today as when it was first published. It is particularly poignant that only recently, in November of 2005, did the Brazilian government move to declassify dictatorship-era files. Perhaps this signals that the Brazilian government is willing to fully engage with the legacies of the dictatorship, but for the time being Weschler's book offers one of the few windows on this shameful past.
The section on Uruguay is also thoroughly engaging and recounts all the anxieties of a citizen-initiated campaign to bring former torturers to justice. Weschler's skillful eyewitness accounts make the reader feel as if the petition drive were happening right now, as opposed to two decades ago.
A Miracle, A Universe is a thoroughly well-researched and thoughtful contribution to general human rights literature and should be read by anyone with an interest in social movements and human rights activism, not just those with an interest in Latin America.
This book will have you knee deep in emotion!.......2005-02-03
Considering myself to be a young leftist, I had just read Michael Moore's books "Stupid White Men and Dude, Wheres my country?". Of course this was childs play to real writings and i decided to up myself a level. Being born in Australia of Uruguayan parents and living in Uruguay for a few years I already had some base knowledge on the tortures and dissapearences across Latin-America, this book told me more than I could of ever imagined. It opened my eyes to the reality of the situation and just how much the Brasilian and Uruguayan people had suffered, as well as all those other people who faced horrible fates at the hand of dictatorships. The author is completely nuetral and criticises both sides accordingly. This book was the turning point in my life, having always been one of those people that say, "I cant read books, i get to the 5th page and im bored". Now I read them by the dozen, my thirst for knowledge is unstoppable and i owe it to this book. Upon completion I had many emotions flowing through me, but one true desire overpowered them all...then and there I swore to do everything in my power to end these kind of abuses.
Very Interesting A Thorough Reporting Work........2003-04-29
This book reads like a work of journalism. It was good because it explained the economic and social conditions that spawn totalitarian regimes and military takeovers. Very good bibliography if you want to further your study. Good Interviews. Very Thorough and Fair. More than I would have been. Names, Dates, and the history behind the story is always given.
¡Nunca más! How the rest of the world has lived..........2002-10-24
An incredible book that describes a few horrific cultures of dictatorship that will hopefully be forever unrecognizable to people in the United States. The most fascinating parts of the book are the theories of how the dicatorships came to be (the Tupamaros in Uruguay and the backlash of the military, etc.); even more incredible is how the leaders of the respective dictatorships stayed in power out of necessary compromises with the government(some are still in power, which will be difficult to swallow after reading this book). It is, in the end, a hopeful book with a warning: "¡Nunca más!" The book asks "how do you come to terms with those that tortured?" (especially in the incredible situation of passing someone who tortured you in the street, described by someone in the book) Another point the author makes is that there can be forgiveness after such horror, and if there's not there may just be more torture. A very worthwhile read, but not for the squeamish.
Lastly, the book provides a good introduction to a much neglected country: Uruguay. There are very few accounts in English of Uruguay, and this is probably the best I've seen. I have also visited Uruguay; it is a fascinating country and well worth a visit. You get a real appreciation for the friendliness of the people after reading what a lot of them went through during "la dictadura."
A gripping, passionate work of reportage........2001-03-13
This is a magnificent book about a terrible subject. From the sixties through till the mid-Eighties, almost the entire continent of South America fell under the sway, or rather the boot, of military dictatorship. The dictatorships were, without exception but with varying degrees of vigour, active in torturing political prisoners. Weschler does a masterful job in describing the various forces that contributed to the overthrow of democracy throughout the Southern cone (not the least of which was American insistence on training Southern militaries and police forces in counter-insurgency in the hope that Castro's example would not spread further south), but the book's focus is not only the depravities of the two regimes -- Brazil and Uruguay -- but on the efforts of survivors of torture and imprisonment to make their oppressors see and recognise their evils.
The first section, 'A miracle, a universe' recounts the incredible efforts that went into collating and publishing the account Brasil: Nunca Mais (Brazil: Never Again), a book which set forth the policies of systematic torture and denial of due process practiced by Brazil's dictators. The truly remarkable aspect of the work was that all the material was obtained from the regime's own archives, over a period of several years, and at great personal risk to the authors. It's an inspiring story, and one that demonstrates the power of the written word.
The second and longer part of the book, 'The reality of the world', centres of the efforts of a committe in Uruguay to call those accused of torture during the country's decade-plus period of military dictatorship to account. In an effort to hasten reconciliation (or so they claimed), the civilian government declared an amnesty for those imprisoned for subversion under the old regime; later this amnesty was extended to those who tortured their political enemies. A group of concerned citizens began an exhausting referendum campaign to put the second amnesty to a vote. Weschler makes their task as exciting as a Hollywood thriller, without ever losing sight of the horror and tragedy which had been their inspiration. It's a beautifully structured, patient, and gorgeously written piece of work. An afterword makes some more general claims about the need to speak up on the subject of torture. 'The scream that comes welling out of the torture chamber is thus double -- the body calling out to the soul, the self calling out to others -- and in both cases, it goes unanswered. Torture's stark lesson is precisely that enveloping silence: it aims to take that silence and introject it back into its victim, to replace the flame of subjectivity with an abject, hollow void.' It is through reading books like Weschler's, and discussing and acting on his suggestions and the example of those in Brazil and Uruguay and elsewhere, that this silence can be partly drowned out. The book deserves -- indeed, demands -- a wide readership.
Book Description
Bordering all but two of South America’s other nations and by far Latin America’s largest country, Brazil differs linguistically, historically, and culturally from Spanish America. Its indigenous peoples share the country with descendants of Portuguese conquerors and the Africans they imported to work as slaves, along with more recent immigrants from southern Europe, Japan, the Middle East, and elsewhere. Capturing the scope of this country’s rich diversity and distinction as no other book has doneâwith over a hundred entries from a wealth of perspectivesâThe Brazil Reader offers a fascinating guide to Brazilian life, culture, and history.
Complementing traditional views with fresh ones, The Brazil Reader’s
historical selections range from early colonization to the present day, with sections on imperial and republican Brazil, the days of slavery, the Vargas years, and the more recent return to democracy. They include letters, photographs, interviews, legal documents, visual art, music, poetry, fiction, reminiscences, and scholarly analyses. They also include observations by ordinary residents, both urban and rural, as well as foreign visitors and experts on Brazil. Probing beneath the surface of Brazilian realityâpast and presentâThe Reader looks at social behavior, women’s lives, architecture, literature, sexuality, popular culture, and strategies for coping with the travails of life in a country where the affluent live in walled compounds to separate themselves from the millions of Brazilians hard-pressed to find food and shelter. Contributing to a full geographic accountâfrom the Amazon to the Northeast and the Central-Southâof this country’s singular multiplicity, many pieces have been written expressly for this volume or were translated for it, having never previously been published in English.
This second book in The Latin America Readers series will interest students, specialists, travelers for both business and leisure, and those desiring an in-depth introduction to Brazilian life and culture.
Customer Reviews:
Primary Sources.......2007-01-06
An excellent collection of primary sources from Brazilian history. It strangely skips entire decades and periods which is its only shortcoming.
The Brazil Reader.......2006-02-12
I'm a capoeira instructor living in the United States. I wish all of my students would read this collection. It's a great introduction to the history, culture, and politics of Brazil. So much of life in Brazil is so different from life in the United States. So much of that difference is because of the history of each country.
This book starts at the beginning with discovery and the start of the slave trade. It continues through to modern history and politics of the country.
This book is money and time well spent.
Learn more at http://www.capsprings.com.
Short Pieces for Fun Reading.......2002-10-22
From exerpts of historical claims to letters from diplomats, from essays on slavery to descriptions of food, this book gives insights on the spirit and history of Brazil in easy to read snippets. A picture of a people emerges from original sources and non-academic evaluations that adds debth to what you will see when you go there.
I wish this book was in Portuguese.......2000-07-05
I brought this book in Los Angeles on the way back from a trip to Disney with my children. I finished it almost when I arrived home. The book has great insight and should be read by Brazilians, because it presents things as they are, not as they are supposed to be. Maybe the book will be públished in Brazil some day. I hope so.
A Unique Perspective, Generally Interesting.......2000-05-11
This book is a collection of short essays on Brazil. I found at least half to be quite interesting, though I probably skimmed about a quarter of them. Many of the essays frequently give a first hand account of life as a small farmer, favela resident or fisherman in Brazil. These essays capture and explain to the English reader the hopes, values and experiences of actual Brazilians. Most English readers gain their understanding of Brazil only second hand through academics or journalists. This book offers a fresh, reality based perspective on Brazil for English readers who haven't learned about Brazil outside of academia, the New York Times, or the beaches of Rio.
Book Description
A Concise History of Brazil covers almost 500 years of Brazilian history, from the arrival of the Portuguese in the New World to the political events that defined the transition in recent years from an authoritarian to a democratic political regime. Brazilian territorial unity and national identity were forged throughout the nineteenth century, after the proclamation of independence in 1822, resulting in a nation with one common language and wide ethnic and racial variety. Remarkable in this respect, the country nevertheless faces problems of social and ethnic disparity as well as of preservation and adequate use of its natural resources. This book emphasizes topics that have deeply influenced the historical formation of Brazil and affected its existence to the present day, such as the destruction of Indian civilizations, slavery and massive immigration throughout the last decades of the nineteenth century and the first decades of the twentieth century.
Customer Reviews:
Leaden........2002-07-27
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.
Want to learn Brazilean history?.......2001-03-19
Great way to learn about what has happened in Brazil since the Portuguese invaded it in the 1500.
Concise but nevertheless satisfactorily comprehensive.......2000-09-18
This is a very interesting book on the History of Brazil. Concise but nevertheless satisfactorily comprehensive.
Brazil is surely a unique occurrence in South America. It was colonized by the Portuguese instead of the Spaniards, it maintained and even expanded its territory while the Spanish South America was fragmented. The ethnical and cultural formation was less influenced by the original inhabitants having received a much more important contribution from Africans. The historical process in Brazil was rather bloodless with little change on the power structure. The few exceptions on Brazil's bloodless history were the violent repressions to popular upheavals that were fiercely opposed before a major national conscience could be formed. Nowadays Brazil presents a strong industry but is still very unfair on the wealth distribution.
The reasons why Brazil became what it is today are brilliantly presented in Boris Fausto book. Each major episode is analyzed on its origins and consequences making the book very well connected. Very useful demographic and economic data is presented throughout the book.
The main problems I see on the book are the lack of simple geographical background information and the writing style that is sometimes very academic and dry. The book presents at least two maps but the use of historic location names without a better explanation can sometimes cause confusion to readers that lack a basic understanding of Brazil's geography. A brief overall introduction to nowadays Brazil regions covering geographical, ethnical, cultural and economic aspects would be welcome in future editions.
Cultural aspects were deliberately ignored. That could make the book concise but it forces the reader to search elsewhere for information on this important aspect in a country's history. A few glitches can be found here and there as it usually happens in translated books, for example magnesium is reported as an important export product during the first 20th century half instead of manganese.
Overall this is a very good book, a great way to have an introduction to the history of such an important and unique country as Brazil.
It is concise, but also boring, and certainly not short.......2000-01-27
This book is concise, but reads like a dictionary definition of Brazilian history. It will have a hard time keeping your attention, even if you are compeletely unfamiliar with Brazilian history.
A much better book is Thomas Skidmore's recent book on the history of Brazil. Or, if you are looking for an understaning of the present state of things in Brazil, I would highly recommend Joseph Page's "The Brazilians."
Book Description
Through the lens of Brazil's trademark sport, Alex Bellos brings us a fascinating portrait of Brazilian identity.
The Brazilian soccer team is one of the modern wonders of the world. Its essence is a game in which prodigious individual skills outshine team tactics, where dribbles and flicks are preferred over physical challenges or long-distance passes, where technique has all the elements of dance and, indeed, is often described as such. At their best Brazilians are, we like to think, both athletes and artists. Soccer is how the world sees Brazil, but it is also how Brazilians see themselves. The game symbolizes racial harmony, flamboyance, youth, innovation, and skill, and yet it is also a microcosm of the country itself, containing all of its contradictions.
Travelling extensively from Uruguay to the northeastern backlands, and from the coastal cities of Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo to the Amazon jungle, Alex Bellos shows how Brazil changed soccer and how soccer shaped Brazil. He tells the stories behind the great players, like Pele and Garrincha, the great teams, and the great matches, as well as extraordinary stories from people and pitches all over this vast country. With an unerring eye for a good story and a marvelous ear for the voices of the people he meets, Alex Bellos uncovers what Ronaldo called the 'true truth' about Brazilian soccer.
Customer Reviews:
Beautiful Brazil Book.......2006-07-20
This book gets at the marriage between Brazilian life and Brazilian football like no other. Great research, great interviews, great stories--all written with great intellect, love and humour.
My favourite chapters are the one that focuses on the origins of players nicknames, the story of the Big Kickabout and the beautiful one about the great Socrates.
You cannot call yourself a fan of Brazilian futebol and not read this book.
Football and Society.......2005-11-21
As a self-confessed football fanatic (soccer for all you American and Australian readers), shamefully my knowledge of Brazilian football was rather lacking. Knowing that I would be spending eight months living in Rio, this past Christmas I went out and bought a copy of this book hoping to learn a little more about the game as it is played in Brazil. While the book did somewhat of a good job meeting my goals, this book is much more than just a guide to Brazilian football. Rather it is an in depth investigation into the strong role that football plays in Brazilian society.
The book of course has the pre-requisite chapters on the two Brazilian greats Pele and Garrincha, in addition to an investigation into Ronaldo and his fateful day during the 1998 World Cup Final in Paris. But the best chapters of the books are the ones that dig deeper into the sociological role that football plays in Brazilian life, from the rich and powerful, right down to the hardcore fans who live in the country's dangerous favelas (slums). Bellos obviously spent an enormous amount of time and money traveling this great country to get all kinds of different perspectives, and the novel is that much better for it. I suppose if I had something negative to say about this book it's that certain chapters (such as Frogs and Miracles) drag on a little too much for my liking. However, do not let this put you off for Futebol is truly worth reading.
Anyone with any interest in football needs to pick this book up to understand what it is that makes the Brazilian game so beautiful. Anyone who plans to live in Brazil, whether they like football or not, needs to read this book if only to understand why football plays such a strong role in the country's culture. While you don't have to adore football to enjoy your life in Brazil (I have met a fair few who wouldn't even give a football fan the time of day), you do need to understand its immense importance and Bellos does a great job of explaining it.
Samba Soccer At Its Best.......2005-08-10
Alex Bellos, a British journalist for the Observer and Guardian, does an excellent job with this tremendously researched book. He takes the reader across the sprawling expanse of continental Brazil, and we are left with a very candid view about "futebol," along with its history, traditions, innovations, humorous characters, corruption, but above all, that it is underlying glue uniting a very diverse nation. One can argue that soccer is the common religion of Brazil. Perhaps more apt would be to say that Brazil is the temple for those who worship world soccer. We have found our Holy Book in this work by Mr. Bellos.
Mr. Bellos paints an interesting portrait, and interviewed hundreds of people for this book. Famous players, priests, soothsayers, a superfan, presidents of local teams, coaches, and everyday Brazilians whose lives are defined by soccer. He even ventured to the obscure Faroe Islands of the frigid North Atlantic to meet with a few of the "Brazilian Foreign Legion" that plys their trade in far off lands. His recounting of the story of Mane' Garrincha, a tragic Brazilian legend, was captivating. As was his interview with Socrates, a famous player and social activist from the great 1982 Brazilian National Team. Of course, no book about Brazilian football could exempt a story about Pele'. His descriptions and historical context about the Amazon region were very intriguing, along with the "Big Zero" marker between the Northern and Southern Hemispheres. Mr. Bellos is a reporter who is not afraid to get his feet wet. Both figuratively and literally. :-)
This book contains more than the theme of soccer. Mr. Bellos describes the social inequalities of Brazil, its unique culture, governmental apparatus, and many local vignettes that make this a very educational read. If you have a passion for futebol brasileiro, you will enjoy this book. Even if you are not a soccer fan, this book will educate you about a country that is defined by its national sport, but has much more to offer to the world.
Thank you for the opportunity to review this excellent book.
entertaining and well-researched, but in need of editing.......2004-11-22
This is an entertaining and well-researched book, although at over 400 pages it could do with a bit of editing. It's not so much a book about Brazilian football, but one about the Brazilian obsession with football. As such, it's more about Brazilian history, culture, society, politics and national identity, and the relationship of football with Brazil's other obsession - sex. This is not a book about the technicalities of football itself. Pelé, Garrincha, Tostão, Ronaldo, Rivelino, Zico, Carlos Alberto, Roberto Carlos and Romário all feature (though surprisingly not Rivaldo), with interesting insights and information presented (not always of a footballing nature). However, the real stars of the book are those eccentric characters who have extended Brazil's love of football to autoball (football involving cars!), button ball (table football), beach soccer and ball juggling (especially by women, including Ronaldo's wife). The names of Brazilian footballers are deciphered, emphasising the Brazilian preference for nicknames and the names of famous film stars and singers. Bellos discusses at some length the deep trough that Brazilian football sunk into after the defeat in the 1998 World Cup final, in particular the controversy around Ronaldo. The extent of corruption in Brazilian football that was uncovered at the time is also exposed. In a fascinating interview, Socrates explains his reasons for Brazil's failings in the couple of years before the 2002 World Cup. It's only a pity that the book was published before Brazil's subsequent success. Such a dramatic turnaround in fortunes, both for Brazil and Ronaldo, cried out for further explanation. Bellos states more than once that Brazilians view football as "a game in which prodigious individual skills outshine team tactics, where dribbles and flicks are preferred over physical challenges and long distance passes". The Brazilian team of 2002 showed that a combination of these attributes can be both successful and highly entertaining.
Beautiful..........2003-05-31
'Futebol' by Alex Bellos, is an amazing book detailing the nature of brazilian fooball, and it's effect upon the entire nation, a world full of passion and corruption. Bellos shows the passion for football which Brazilians have, their love of 'jogo bonito'. Chronicling events such as Brazil's fateful 1950 world cup loss to Uruguay and the rise of players such as Garincha,who managed to win the hearts of all, more loved than Pele.
This is a must for anyone interested in the passion which football can produce, and anyone who has ever been enchanted by the beauty which the Brazilians used to produce (pre '82). Plus the cover artwork makes the book worth the purchase.
Book Description
This is the most comprehensive and up-to-date book on the increasingly important and controversial subject of race relations in Brazil. North American scholars of race relations frequently turn to Brazil for comparisons, since its history has many key similarities to that of the United States. Brazilians have commonly compared themselves with North Americans, and have traditionally argued that race relations in Brazil are far more harmonious because the country encourages race mixture rather than formal or informal segregation.
More recently, however, scholars have challenged this national myth, seeking to show that race relations are characterized by exclusion, not inclusion, and that fair-skinned Brazilians continue to be privileged and hold a disproportionate share of wealth and power.
In this sociological and demographic study, Edward Telles seeks to understand the reality of race in Brazil and how well it squares with these traditional and revisionist views of race relations. He shows that both schools have it partly right--that there is far more miscegenation in Brazil than in the United States--but that exclusion remains a serious problem. He blends his demographic analysis with ethnographic fieldwork, history, and political theory to try to "understand" the enigma of Brazilian race relations--how inclusiveness can coexist with exclusiveness.
The book also seeks to understand some of the political pathologies of buying too readily into unexamined ideas about race relations. In the end, Telles contends, the traditional myth that Brazil had harmonious race relations compared with the United States encouraged the government to do almost nothing to address its shortcomings.
Customer Reviews:
okay.......2007-01-04
There's a lot of quantative data in this book, but not a lot of analysis, real commentary, or much qualitative information. So with respect to solid data one might refer to in a report or debate, its great, but not always the most interesting reading.
Book Description
Euclides da Cunha's classic account of the brutal campaigns against religious mystic Antonio Conselheiro has been called the Bible of Brazilian nationality.
"Euclides da Cunha went on the campaigns [against Conselheiro] as a journalist and what he returned with and published in 1902 is still unsurpassed in Latin American literature. Cunha is a talent as grand, spacious, entangled with knowledge, curiosity, and bafflement as the country itself. . . . On every page there is a heart of idea, speculation, dramatic observation that tells of a creative mission undertaken, the identity of the nation, and also the creation of a pure and eloquent prose style."—Elizabeth Hardwick, Bartleby in Manhattan
Customer Reviews:
From a frequent Brazilian traveler.......2006-03-21
In addition to the reviews previously posted, my advice to the non-intellectual reader is to first read Errol Lincoln Uys's Brazil, which is an easy to read historical Michener-type novel that will frame the events of the eye witness account of the "rebellion" of Canudos documented in d Cunda's book. After reading Rebellion in the Backlands, I recommend Mario Varges Llosa's The War at the End of the World, again a novel but featuring a fictionlized Euclides da Cunha that makes The Rebellion in the Backlands even more understandable. Both Llosa's and Cunha's books are required reading in Brazilian schools and I believe it would be a waste of time to try to gain insights into today's Brazil without giving yourself this very unique experience.
Great Book, but a Challenge.......2004-12-03
This is not an easy book. Don't pick it up if you like pop novels and sci-fi. It's for the serious reader of history, military tactics, and social upheaval. Da Cunha is a brilliant observer of the 1896-97 Brazilian military's crushing of an ostensibly revolutionary movement in the dry interior. Brutal, honest, clear, incisive. An amazing and challenging book.
All the ingredients of a historic epic.......2003-12-16
"Rebellion in the Backlands" is one of the best books ever written in the Brazilian literature and one of the most poorly known, given the intrincacies of the Euclidian vocabulary. The centennial of the first publication of the book was commemorated in 2002 not only in Brazil but also abroad, where there are many intellectuals who are keen of everything related to the book, the so-called euclidians. "Os Sertões", the Brazilian Portuguese name of the book, is an epic and was inspirational to many ancient and modern films run in Brazil about the conflict, and also to a book by the Peruvian celebrated author Mario Vargas Llosa ("The War at the End of the World"), who had Euclides da Cunha as idol since his childhood.
Euclides da Cunha, then a war correspondent of the very famous southern Brazilian newspaper O Estado de S.Paulo, wrote the book with a view to the conflicts ocurring in Bahia, after the so-called Proclamation of Republic, in 1889, thus ending 72 years of monarchical rule, something which upset many powerful landowners tied to imperial interest to raise arms against the new republican order. The revolt, known as the War of Canudos, as a historic fact, was eventually lost and the insurrects had to put down their arms, and the battle was won by government troops, but the War of Canudos was to enter Brazilian history as one of the cruelest ever fought in Brazil, and the government had to spend much more money than at first foreseen, losing its face in the end: how come a so strong army had so much difficulty to conquer a bunch of illiterate misers?. All this to kill the dozens of thousands of insurrected who amassed themselves in the poor village of Canudos, in the northeastern region of Brazil, the poorest region of a poor country.
From the side of the mutinees, the revolt had (almost unwittingly in the beginnin) a leader, Antonio Conselheiro, a mystical man who wandered for years in the hinterlands of Brazilian Northeast, followed by growing multitudes of disposessed, who saw in him a religious man to rescue Catholic fundamental religious values of medieval importance, and to whom they follow as sheeps follow their sheperd.
To sum it up, the book has all the ingredients of a good historic novel, despite its characters being non-conventional. I hope you enjoy it as I did.
It Really Is That Great.......2002-12-29
Da Cunhaýs 1902 book has been justifiably called the ýBible of Brazilian Nationalityý. This is a challenging book, over 500 pages in this edition, dense and probably unsuitable to those who need the stimulation of a pop novel. Da Cunha was present at the 1896-97 military assaults on the rebellious village of ýCanudosý in the arid Brazilian interior. A gifted writer with a background as a military engineer, Da Cunha brings a precise expertýs eye to the military campaigns, never failing at such details as order of battle, casualties, supply lines, and tactics. The campaigns themselves were stirring and bloody affairs: four separate military campaigns, each larger than the last that met increasingly stiff resistance from the Canudos villagers. In the end, 10,000 souls may have perished on both sides. The end, of course, is well known to all Brazilians. ýCanudos did not surrender. The only case of its kind in history, it held out to the last man. Conquered inch by inch, in the literal meaning of the words, it fell on October 5, toward dusk ý when the last defenders fell, dying every man of them. There were only four of them left: an old man, two other grown men, and a child, facing a furiously raging army of five thousand soldiers.ý
If the book were merely a military history, it would be successful. But it is far more, for Da Cunha is more than just a military observer. He is geologist, geographer, anthropologist, sociologist, and historian. This book literally defines the still-nascent nation of Brazil. The backwoods villagers of Canudos were inspired by a religious fervor cultivated by a heretical evangelist named Antonio the Counselor. Their story is part Masada and part Waco. Da Cunha places Antonio in the context of his own life and the development of Brazilýs interior. While sometimes indulging in unfortunate racial generalities, Da Cunha takes an incredible interest in the geography of the region, describing how it shapes people. How the society that emerges in such a poor and desiccated land can yield the lawlessness and anomie suitable for the development of an Antonio. Da Cunha both despises and respects the villagers, ýjaguncosý, in Canudos. He hates their illiteracy, superstition and backwardness while grudgingly praising their bravery, loyalty, and cunning.
Canudos, in his view, is a time warp, Brazilian society spun back to a primitive time, and for that all Brazilians share guilt. He blames urbanites and elites, the generals and craven politicians, the recently deposed monarchy and the addiction to European styles for the evolution of a Canudos. Two Brazils have developed, he writes, one is built on the European and Portuguese model and necessarily fails to address the second Brazil, the one populated by millions of rural souls in the impoverished interior, for Portugal was never faced with such a community.
Da Cunhaýs genius is demonstrating that Canudos is a consequence of the failure to develop a unified national identity that incorporates all Brazilians. It is a battle between old poor Brazil and progressive modern Brazil. Thus his book was the first step to defining the true Brazilian nationality, one that survives to today ý a nationality that blends European, African, and native traditions. A nationality to which all Brazilians now belong. Canudos was a wrenching experience in many ways. There was immediate and widespread shock over the year of military disasters and thousands of casualties inflicted by a ragtag band of backlanders. Then there was the deeper self-analysis that accompanied the publication of this book. Like other American states, Brazil could never survive until it stopped looking to the Old World and developed its own identity, one shaped by its own people and circumstances, and one that acknowledged the existence and worth of every citizen.
The enduring testament to Da Cunha is that he was among the first to recognize the need for such a national self-criticism, and his work is one of the efforts that launched it. Brazil is what it is today in part because of the clarity of Da Cunhaýs vision of Brazil as set out in this monumental work. Canudos was a Brazilian failure, and this book went a long way to finding the solution. It really is as great as they say.
A Masterpiece of History, Literature and Ethnology.......2000-01-09
This book is familiar to every educated Brazilian, but is not widely known in the USA; it should be.
It recounts a historical episode of 1896 and 1897. The government of the Republic of Brazil decided to suppress a religious sect of perhaps 7000 members, some of them violent and lawless, living in a remote rural area; the sect denied the legitimacy of the Brazilian Republic. The ensuing campaign lasted ten months, involved the deaths of hundreds of Brazilian army soldiers, and culminated in the extermination of the sect; these days it might be considered genocide.
The book's author, a formal professional Brazilian army officer, covered the campaign for `O Estado do Sao Paulo', Brazil's equivalent to the New York Times. He was horrified. So he wrote this book, which has beeen compared to everything from Lawrence's `Seven Pillars of Wisdom' to Dickens, Carlyle, and the prophet Ezekiel. Originally published in 1902, it has been in print in Brazil ever since.
The book is tough reading (and is no easier in Portuguese than in English; Samuel Putnam, the translator, did a superb job.) So why should one read it?
For one thing, it poses in the starkest possible terms a dilemma we still face from time to time. Under what circumstances, and to what extent, is it ethical for an elected representative government to coerce an organized group of its citizens who sincerely deny the legitimacy of the government and the laws?
And, it forces the reader to ask: What is history? How should it be written? How do the facts of history depend on cultural assumptions? Euclides da Cunha, like Thucydides, could find no suitable model for what he wanted to write, so, like Thucydides, he invented his own. I think this book could serve as fertile ground for a productive discussion among social constructionists and their adversaries.
The thoughtful reader will also ponder on what central message da Cunha was trying to convey; in later life da Cunha declined to clarify this. One possible answer is implied in `The War of the End of the World', a novel drawn from da Cunha's book by the Peruvian writer and politician Mario Vargas Llosa. But I have seen other possible answers in thoughtful commentaries on da Cunha's book, so the reader may wish to decide for himself or herself.
Finally, despite its difficulty, the book is great literature. It accelerates steadily from a seemingly interminable prolog in which nothing much seems to be happening to a climactic ending so gripping and fast paced that it's hard to stop reading. The only other author I'm familiar with who employs this technique as effectively is Thomas Mann.
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