Description
Brazil has long been an enigma to outsiders. Over the last two decades alone, Latin America’s largest and most populous country has been celebrated as a vibrant new democracy with a powerful economy, and derided as a nation in complete disarray heading toward the status of a failed state.
In this vibrant and smart book, Joel Wolfe tells the story of this “incomplete nation” and its two-hundred-year-old struggle to control its vast national territory and to fashion and maintain a functioning democracy against a backdrop of intense inequality, racial discrimination, and regional rivalries. From independence to the abolition of slavery, from scarring military dictatorship to the election of President Bolsonaro – the “Tropical Trump” – and his defeat by former President Lula da Silva, the author weaves a rich portrait of a country fighting against the odds to overcome the long-standing and seemingly intractable problems that have, for most of its history, hindered national unity and development.
Table of Contents
Map
Acronyms, Abbreviations, and Terms
Acknowledgements
Introduction
Chapter 1: Tropical Liberalism (1840-1930)
Chapter 2: The Failed March to Modernity (1930-1964)
Chapter 3: Military Dictatorship (1964-1985)
Chapter 4: Chaotic Democracy (1985-1994)
Chapter 5: The Triumph of Social Democracy (1993-2010)
Chapter 6: The Great Unraveling (2011-)
Further Reading
