As well as any book I know, Ronald Schneider’s Brazil fulfills Fred Praeger’s original conceptualization of the Westview series Nations in the Modern World as a collection of comprehensive country reviews in authoritative, readable books that nonspecialists could turn to as basic sources to gain insight into the country at hand. In developing a profile of Brazil, Schneider provides the reader first with a comprehensive overview of the physical and human topography of the country that calls attention to its continental dimensions. The core of the book is a synthesis of Brazil’s political history from inception to the present. In the section dealing with contemporary Brazil, he captures the dynamics of Brazil’s transition from authoritarianism back to democracy as well as any account I have seen, and in such a way that the neophyte can easily grasp the complexity and the incongruities that make up its political economy. Once Schneider has established the foundations of modern Brazil, he surveys the developments in Brazilian culture which make that country a unique national state in Latin America. Lastly, he flags for the reader the significance of Brazil in the modern world: its emergence as a regional actor dominant not only within the South American continent today, but of increasing significance on the world scene.
The particular strength of this book is the mass of material the author synthesizes in such a way that the reader can grasp the importance of Brazil (a country whose size, diversity, and complexity place it in a category apart from all other countries in Latin America) as an emerging power in the Western Hemisphere. While Latin American specialists know that in the Western Hemisphere Brazil alone matches the continental dimensions of the United States, few others are prepared to recognize Brazil’s potential as an emerging and vibrant economy, society, and political system with the capacity to extend its influence far beyond its borders during the coming century. But even Latin Americanists who are not Brazilian specialists will profit from this book, for it opens up a cultural and political world in the Americas that is both profoundly different from that of the hemisphere’s Spanish-speaking countries and poorly understood by those accustomed to think of Brazilian politics as simply a variant of Hispanic American patterns and processes. In the past, Brazil has approached the threshold of becoming a regional power only to enter into crisis. But Schneider makes clear that Brazil has now become a powerhouse with sufficient economic weight to make its influence felt throughout South America. Through MERCOSUL (Mercado Comum do Sul), Brazil has become a country to be reckoned with in the realignments that have come to characterize post-Cold War international relations.
