GoodReads meta-data is 780 pages, rated 4.36 by 484 litizens.
Genre: History (not biography).
Verdict: Parochial.
Declaration: I only read the lengthy sample, and decided not to proceed.
The sample was long on pointless erudition and short on facts. It seemed to presuppose the reader was familiar with the major elements of the history of the region, the arrival of Europeans, and the individuals and families that founded Brazil. And then sets about to debunk them without ever quite explaining or contextualising them.
I did learn this. Portuguese sailors in the East Indies found a tree with red bark and red sap which was used to make a red dye. Then when the Portuguese in their constant competition with the Spanish went West, they found a red tree with red sap that could be used as a dye and they called the area Brasil after the name of tree in the east Indies. It is from the Latin for embers as a colour.
While the authors expatiate at length on the terrible consequences of the European invasion for natives, they are mainly portrayed as hapless and helpless victims even as the more detailed discussions show that some native tribes cooperated with the Europeans to defeat their traditional enemies.
After first debunking myths about cannibalism in the region, the authors then devote much space to it.
Yes, I know only a small mind would be bothered by these inconsistencies and so I stand convicted.
The book does not offer the short history of this vast and varied land that I sought. Rather it declares its purpose to be to debunking the myths Brasilians tell themselves about their history and country. Since this reader does not know these myths, there is no traction. It lacks the conventional road signs to guide readers and it lurches back-and-forth. There are no transitions, no indications of time, no summaries and much musing which is not amusing. There is a whiff of the post-modern. Always deadly.
The city of Brasilia registered on my imagination when I was an adolescent and since then I have come across a few references to it. The striking architecture is the main thing, though James Scott’s Seeing Like a State (1998) has some diamond insights into the resulting city. John Brunner’s sy fy novel The Squares of the City (1966) was another take on it. I also sought out and read a couple of novels set there, but they made no use of the reality or fantasy of Brasilia. Some of this itch was stimulated anew by our visit to mother Portugal a couple of years ago where there was no sign of Brazil or any of its other one-time colonies. Not even any statues that I saw.
The post hoc criticisms of Brasilia are legion. I tried reading David Epstein’s Brasília: Plan and Reality (1977) but found it largely impenetrable. It is a discussion mostly of what other researchers have said, and so guarded and encoded in academicese that it does not communicate to a general reader – moi. It reminded me a little of the story of a Danish bus shelter without the insights or humour in Bent Flyvbjerg, Rationality and Power: Democracy in Practice (1998).
This activity about Brasilia on Amazon awakened the mechanical Turk who presented me with this title. I clicked for a sample, and read it. In this case it is a substantial sample of many pages (though on the Kindle I cannot be exact about the number), whereas many Kindle samples of Non-Fiction are so consumed by superfluous front matter there are few pages of substance. Not so in this case. There is plenty to judge by.