Seen as a successful ‘emerging economy’, Brazil walks tall on the world stage and its voice is growing louder. Its success, celebrated in the 2014 Football World Cup and the 2016 Rio Olympic Games, is attracting millions of foreign tourists. Yet Brazil also faces huge challenges: to combine economic growth with measures to reduce the huge social inequality inherited from its slave-owning past, to respect ethnic and cultural diversity, to ensure a popular say in government, to meet energy n...

Brazil stands tall on the world stage as host for the world cup and olympic and paralympic games, attracting millions of new tourists to a country of dazzling scenery and welcoming people. In today's world, it is remarkable for the lack of serious ethnic, religious or racial conflict. Yet Brazil also faces huge challenges: combining economic growth with measures to reduce the huge social inequality inherited from its slave-owning past, respecting ethnic and cultural diversity, ensuring a p...

In 2002, after a long political struggle, Lula was elected Brazil’s first working class President amid huge expectations that he and the Workers’ Party (PT) would bring much-needed reform. A great deal was achieved, including a dramatic reduction in poverty. But, just months before the staging of the World Cup in 2014, a series of social protests swept across the country. In 2015 further demonstrations erupted, with insistent calls for the impeachment of Lula’s re-elected successor, Presid...

Seen as a successful ‘emerging economy’, Brazil walks tall on the world stage and its voice is growing louder. Its success, celebrated in the 2014 Football World Cup and the 2016 Rio Olympic Games, is attracting millions of foreign tourists. Yet Brazil also faces huge challenges: to combine economic growth with measures to reduce the huge social inequality inherited from its slave-owning past, to respect ethnic and cultural diversity, to ensure a popular say in government, to meet energy n...

Since its U.S. debut a quarter-century ago, this brilliant text has set a new standard for historical scholarship of Latin America. It is also an outstanding political economy, a social and cultural narrative of the highest quality, and perhaps the finest description of primitive capital accumulation since Marx.Rather than chronology, geography, or political successions, Eduardo Galeano has organized the various facets of Latin American history according to the patterns of five cen...

Portugal is an established member of the European Union, one of the founders of the euro currency and a founder member of NATO. Yet it is an inconspicuous and largely overlooked country on the continent’s south-west rim.In the fifteenth- and sixteenth-century Age of Discovery the Portuguese led Europe out of the Mediterranean into the Atlantic and they brought Asia and Europe together. Evidence of their one-time four-continent empire can still be felt, not least in the Portuguese language ...

The bestselling primer on the social, political, and economic challenges facing Central and South America—now fully revised and updated.Ten years after its first publication, Michael Reid's bestselling survey of the state of contemporary Latin America has been wholly updated to reflect the new realities of the "Forgotten Continent." The former Americas editor for the Economist, Reid suggests that much of Central and South America, though ...

A fully revised, expanded and updated edition of this masterly portrayal of contemporary Spain.The restoration of democracy in 1977 heralded a period of intense change that continues today. Spain has become a land of extraordinary paradoxes in which traditional attitudes and contemporary preoccupations exist side by side. Focussing on issues which affect ordinary Spaniards, from housing to gambling, from changing sexual mores to rising crime rates. John Hooper's fascinating study b...

In this hugely praised narrative, New York Times reporter Larry Rohter takes the reader on a lively trip through Brazil's history, culture, and booming economy. Going beyond the popular stereotypes of samba, supermodels, and soccer, he shows us a stunning and varied landscape--from breathtaking tropical beaches to the lush and dangerous Amazon rainforest--and how a complex and vibrant people defy definition. He charts Brazil's amazing jump from a debtor nation to one of the world's fastest...

The second edition of A Concise History of Brazil offers a sweeping yet accessible history of Latin America's largest country. Boris Fausto examines Brazil's history from the arrival of the Portuguese in the New World through the long and sometimes rocky transition from independence in 1822 to democracy in the twentieth century. In a completely new chapter, his son Sergio Fausto, a prominent political scientist, brings the history up to the present, focusing on Brazil's increasing global e...

Every year on 11 September, Catalonia celebrates its Diada, its National Day. But the Diada of 2012 was like none other, as an enormous crowd calling for Catalan independence took over the heart of Barcelona. Despite the carnival-like atmosphere that day, the people were very serious about their demands. On the back of this show of force, Catalonia's governing politicians turned secessionist claims into a new headache for a government in Madrid that had only just survived a near-meltdown o...

In the early 20th century, Argentina possessed one of the world's most prosperous economies, yet since then Argentina has suffered a series of boom-and-bust cycles that have seen it fall well below its regional neighbours such as Chile. At the same time, despite the lack of significant ethnic or linguistic divisions, Argentina has failed to create an over-arching post-independence national identity and its political and social history has been marked by frictions, violence and a 50-year se...