A thorough study deeply informed by on-the-ground reporting.
Economist Latin American columnist Reid (Forgotten Continent: The Battle for Latin America's Soul, 2008) provides a knowledgeable overview of the vast, vibrant country that will host the 2014 World Cup and the 2016 Summer Olympics.
The seventh largest economy, the third largest food exporter, the world’s fourth most populous democracy, a country of enormous natural resources, including self-sufficiency in oil, Brazil has had a peaceable, productive recent rise in fortune. However, that emerges from a history of colonialism, slavery and poverty, writes the author. He touches on such recurrent Brazilian problems as the lack of political organization, which was noticeable as early as the Tupi-speaking Indians’ first encounter with Portuguese seafarer Pedro Álvares Cabral on the Brazilian coast in 1500. (They had neither the metals nor the domesticated animals prevalent in the nearby, highly developed Incan, Aztec or Mayan civilizations.) Reid also sifts carefully through the reasons for and long-term ramifications of Brazil’s huge demand for African slaves between 1500 and 1866. The shorter route to Africa, the exchange of export goods for slaves, the inability to attract free labor and the high mortality in its tropical climate are among the factors he explores. Food shortages and poor diet would plague the Brazilian people (and their economy) up until the modern era. The expulsion of the Jesuits in the 18th century left an “education vacuum,” and the Portuguese crown did not encourage the building of universities; the vacuum remains problematic today. Although the Europeans turned Brazil into a highly stratified and patriarchal society, Reid notes that they also fostered the rich blending of African, Indian and Portuguese people and cultures that formed “the main achievement of the colonial period.” In the 20th century, Brazil built a strong nation-state, beginning with dictator-turned–elected president Getúlio Vargas, through the rule of the generals to the forging of a democracy after the 2002 electoral triumph of Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva.
A thorough study deeply informed by on-the-ground reporting.Pub Date: June 10, 2014
ISBN: 978-0-300-16560-9
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Yale Univ.
Review Posted Online: May 5, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2014
HISTORY | MODERN | WORLD | GENERAL HISTORY
Buffs of the Old West will enjoy Clavin’s careful research and vivid writing.
Rootin’-tootin’ history of the dry-gulchers, horn-swogglers, and outright killers who populated the Wild West’s wildest city in the late 19th century.
The stories of Wyatt Earp and company, the shootout at the O.K. Corral, and Geronimo and the Apache Wars are all well known. Clavin, who has written books on Dodge City and Wild Bill Hickok, delivers a solid narrative that usefully links significant events—making allies of white enemies, for instance, in facing down the Apache threat, rustling from Mexico, and other ethnically charged circumstances. The author is a touch revisionist, in the modern fashion, in noting that the Earps and Clantons weren’t as bloodthirsty as popular culture has made them out to be. For example, Wyatt and Bat Masterson “took the ‘peace’ in peace officer literally and knew that the way to tame the notorious town was not to outkill the bad guys but to intimidate them, sometimes with the help of a gun barrel to the skull.” Indeed, while some of the Clantons and some of the Earps died violently, most—Wyatt, Bat, Doc Holliday—died of cancer and other ailments, if only a few of old age. Clavin complicates the story by reminding readers that the Earps weren’t really the law in Tombstone and sometimes fell on the other side of the line and that the ordinary citizens of Tombstone and other famed Western venues valued order and peace and weren’t particularly keen on gunfighters and their mischief. Still, updating the old notion that the Earp myth is the American Iliad, the author is at his best when he delineates those fraught spasms of violence. “It is never a good sign for law-abiding citizens,” he writes at one high point, “to see Johnny Ringo rush into town, both him and his horse all in a lather.” Indeed not, even if Ringo wound up killing himself and law-abiding Tombstone faded into obscurity when the silver played out.
Buffs of the Old West will enjoy Clavin’s careful research and vivid writing.Pub Date: April 21, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-250-21458-4
Page Count: 400
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Jan. 19, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2020
An absorbing, wide-ranging story of humans’ relationship with the water.
A study of swimming as sport, survival method, basis for community, and route to physical and mental well-being.
For Bay Area writer Tsui (American Chinatown: A People's History of Five Neighborhoods, 2009), swimming is in her blood. As she recounts, her parents met in a Hong Kong swimming pool, and she often visited the beach as a child and competed on a swim team in high school. Midway through the engaging narrative, the author explains how she rejoined the team at age 40, just as her 6-year-old was signing up for the first time. Chronicling her interviews with scientists and swimmers alike, Tsui notes the many health benefits of swimming, some of which are mental. Swimmers often achieve the “flow” state and get their best ideas while in the water. Her travels took her from the California coast, where she dove for abalone and swam from Alcatraz back to San Francisco, to Tokyo, where she heard about the “samurai swimming” martial arts tradition. In Iceland, she met Guðlaugur Friðþórsson, a local celebrity who, in 1984, survived six hours in a winter sea after his fishing vessel capsized, earning him the nickname “the human seal.” Although humans are generally adapted to life on land, the author discovered that some have extra advantages in the water. The Bajau people of Indonesia, for instance, can do 10-minute free dives while hunting because their spleens are 50% larger than average. For most, though, it’s simply a matter of practice. Tsui discussed swimming with Dara Torres, who became the oldest Olympic swimmer at age 41, and swam with Kim Chambers, one of the few people to complete the daunting Oceans Seven marathon swim challenge. Drawing on personal experience, history, biology, and social science, the author conveys the appeal of “an unflinching giving-over to an element” and makes a convincing case for broader access to swimming education (372,000 people still drown annually).
An absorbing, wide-ranging story of humans’ relationship with the water.Pub Date: April 14, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-61620-786-1
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Algonquin
Review Posted Online: Jan. 4, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2020
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