Over time, Brazil has evolved into a well-defined nation with a strong sense of identity. From the natural beauty of the Amazon River to the exciting resort city of Rio de Janeiro, from soccer champion Pele to classical musician Villa Lobos, Brazil is known as a distinctive, diverse country. It is recognized worldwide for its World Cup soccer team, samba music, dancing, and celebrations of Carnival. This book provides a well-rounded, brief history of Brazil that uniquely focuses on both the politics and culture of the republic. Colin MacLachlan uses a political narrative to frame the evolution of national culture and the formation of national identity. He evaluates Brazilian myths, stereotypes, and icons such as soccer and dancing as part of the historical analysis. Brazil's history is presented from its colonial roots to the present, showing how the country developed its economic and social base, then struggled to modernize and secure a respected world role. Key issues are examined: immigration, slavery and race, territorial expansion, the military, and technology and industrialization. The integration of cultural material enriches the text. It provides handy points for classroom discussion and will help students remember particular aspects Brazil's history. The book includes fascinating side-bars on various aspects of Brazilian culture, including Copacabana Beach and the rain forests. A History of Modern Brazil will inform and entertain students in courses on Brazil and modern Latin America.

Brazil is associated in many people's minds with conviviality, sensuality, and natural beauty. Yet the country behind these images and associations is something of an enigma. It is alternately praised as the "country of the future", a rising power ready to take its place at the top tables of global governance, or written off as a perennial disappointment, a country forever failing to reach its potential, mired in corruption, inequality, poverty, and violence. These oscillations between euphoria and despair obscure a country with its own unique trajectory through the 20th and 21st centuries. This Very Short Introduction offers an account of modern Brazil that covers some of the major features of the country's transformation, including the rise of the modern state in the mid-20th century, the violent repression of dictatorship, the domestic economic, political, and social challenges faced by the country today, and the role Brazil plays in dealing with some of the most important contemporary global problems. In doing so, Anthony Pereira highlights some of the peculiar features of Brazil's development, such as the tendency of its political leaders to engage in complicated, informal political deals; the state's welfare institutions that often exacerbate, rather than improve, the country's deep economic inequalities; and Brazil's long history of peaceful relations with its neighbours despite a high level of state violence against citizens. ABOUT THE SERIES: The Very Short Introductions series from Oxford University Press contains hundreds of titles in almost every subject area. These pocket-sized books are the perfect way to get ahead in a new subject quickly. Our expert authors combine facts, analysis, perspective, new ideas, and enthusiasm to make interesting and challenging topics highly readable.

The first social history examining all aspects of Brazil's radical transition from a predominantly rural society to an urban one.

“Hello, hello Brazil” was the standard greeting Brazilian radio announcers of the 1930s used to welcome their audience into an expanding cultural marketplace. New genres like samba and repackaged older ones like choro served as the currency in this marketplace, minted in the capital in Rio de Janeiro and circulated nationally by the burgeoning recording and broadcasting industries. Bryan McCann chronicles the flourishing of Brazilian popular music between the 1920s and the 1950s. Through analysis of the competing projects of composers, producers, bureaucrats, and fans, he shows that Brazilians alternately envisioned popular music as the foundation for a unified national culture and used it as a tool to probe racial and regional divisions. McCann explores the links between the growth of the culture industry, rapid industrialization, and the rise and fall of Getúlio Vargas’s Estado Novo dictatorship. He argues that these processes opened a window of opportunity for the creation of enduring cultural patterns and demonstrates that the understandings of popular music cemented in the mid–twentieth century continue to structure Brazilian cultural life in the early twenty-first.

The Human Tradition in Modern Brazil makes the last two centuries of Brazilian history come alive through the stories of mostly non-elite individuals. The pieces in this lively collection address how people experienced historical continuities and changes by exploring how they related to the rise of Brazilian national identity and the emergence of a national state. By including a broad array of historical actors from different regions, ethnicities, occupations, races, genders, and eras, The Human Tradition in Modern Brazil brings a human dimension to major economic, political, cultural, and social transitions. Because these perspectives do not always fit with the generalizations made about the predominant attitudes, values, and beliefs of different groups, they bring a welcome complexity to the understanding of Brazilian society and history.

“Beautifully researched and engagingly told, this book captures the bitter conflicts and surprising continuities that marked the emergence of a national style in Brazil as it tells the story of the men and women who, despite their many differences, together created ‘the beautiful game.’”—Roger Kittleson, author of The Country of Football: Soccer and the Making of Modern Brazil “Compellingly shows how each segment of Brazilian society—players, club owners, and spectators, especially the usually neglected female fans—was touched by the sport that it eventually came to proudly embrace as its own.”—Amy Chazkel, coeditor of The Rio de Janeiro Reader: History, Culture, Politics “Highlights the narrative power of soccer, showing how Brazilians—from elite sportsmen and nationalist intellectuals to common men and women—infused the sport with both personal and national importance.”—Joshua Nadel, author of Fútbol!: Why Soccer Matters in Latin America Although the popular history of Brazilian football narrates a story of progress toward democracy and inclusion, it does not match the actual historical record. Instead, football can be understood as an invention of early twentieth century middle-class and wealthy Brazilians who called themselves “sportsmen” and nationalists, and used the sport as part of their larger campaigns to shape and reshape the nation. In this cross-cutting cultural history, Gregg Bocketti traces the origins of football in Brazil from its elitist, Eurocentric identity as “foot-ball” at the end of the nineteenth century to its subsequent mythologization as the specifically Brazilian “futebol,” o jogo bonito (the beautiful game). Bocketti examines the popular depictions of the sport as having evolved from a white elite pastime to an integral part of Brazil’s national identity known for its passion and creativity, and concludes that these mythologized narratives have obscured many of the complexities and the continuities of the history of football and of Brazil. Mining a rich trove of sources, including contemporary sports journalism, archives of Brazilian soccer clubs, and British ministry records, and looking in detail at soccer’s effect on all parts of Brazilian society, Bocketti shows how important the sport is to an understanding of Brazilian nationalism and nation building in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

This ethnographic account of Brazils emergence as a global leader in plastic surgery takes readers from Ipanema socialite circles to telenovela studios to the packed waiting rooms of public hospitals offering free cosmetic surgery.