Brazil Apart: 1964-2019

Description

What does Brazil's lurch to the hard right under Jair Bolsonaro portend for Latin America's most populous society, and how has it come about? Perry Anderson, foremost observer of the Brazilian scene in the English-speaking world, offers a matchless account of the country's recent political upheavals: after the dashed hopes of the Cardoso years, the soaring popularity of Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva; the parliamentary coup d'etat against his successor, Dilma; and the sweeping election victory of Bolsonaro, backed by the Armed Forces and a youthful new right. Always something of a world unto itself, under the Workers' Party, Brazil had bucked the global trend towards a tighter neoliberalism. With its lodestar, Lula, now behind bars, a weighing up of the PT's legacy, and of the contrasting Bolsonaro regime, is urgently needed.

Perry Anderson is the author of, among other books, The H-Word, The Antinomies of Antonio Gramsci, American Foreign Policy and Its Thinkers, The Indian Ideology, The New Old World, Spectrum, Lineages of the Absolutist State, Passages from Antiquity to Feudalism, Considerations on Western Marxism, English Questions and The Origins of Postmodernity. He is an editor at New Left Review.

One of the world's great historians, unrivalled in his ability to master and synthesize vast historical literatures -- Jeet Heer * New Republic * Extraordinary originality and penetrating insight. Sweeping, subtle, sophisticated, provocative, pungently written: all of the above apply * Andrew Bacevich, author of Twilight of the American Century [For American Foreign Policy and Its Thinkers] * His writing is sharp and erudite and even those who do not share his politics will learn from his book -- Gideon Rachman * Financial Times [for American Foreign Policy and Its Thinkers] * A magnificent achievement. It is a product of his ability, near-unique in today's world of ideas, to distil a country's history and politics into a few thousand words that are at once combative and informative -- Mihir S Sharma * Business Standard, New Delhi [For The Indian Ideology] * Exposes some substantial faultlines in recent Indian writing about India and with some justice question the emerging consensus around India's democratic successes -- David Arnold * Times Literary Supplement [For The Indian Ideology] * masterfully recounts the rise and fall of the Brazilian Left. -- Nick Burns * The American Interest * A devastating critique of the rule of the PT. -- Marcelo Hoffman * Berfrois * An approachable yet erudite reconsideration of Brazilian politics between 1994 and Bolsonaro's first year in office...The prose is light, delightfully romping through the twists and turns of Brazilian political life and skewering everyone along the way -- Matthew M. Taylor * Latin American Research Review *