Brazil's Second Chance: En Route Toward the First World

By Lincoln Gordon

Brazil is currently in a critical phase of a decades-long transformation from a patrimonial society--based on the cultivation and export of sugar and coffee--to a modernized industrial and service economy with effective democratic governance. It is the world's fifth largest nation-state in area and population, and ranks eighth in total economic output. Since World War II, Brazil has been a leader in international trade governance and negotiation, playing an important part in development of the GATT and the WTO. Currently, the country is a major factor in negotiations toward a hemispherewide Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA). However, Brazil's political record in the past half century has been erratic and it has struggled with high inflation and balance-of-payment deficits. In this major new work, a former American ambassador to Brazil examines the social, political, and economic history of the country since the 1930s and discusses whether Brazil is now ready to assume a place as an important participant among First World nations.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0815700326
• ISBN13: 9780815700326
• Release Date: April 2001
• Publisher: Brookings Institution Press
• Length: 243 Pages
• Weight: 1.12 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.0" x 6.3" x 9.3"

Customer Reviews

an amazingly well documented, brasilianist piece

Given Gordon's background, he is THE authority (and luckily THE brasilianist) to write such a piece.I was a AMAZED by the ammount of good documentation and multiple sources quoted in the text from almost every possible source. Only improvement here is that it seems that the wave of info available on the Internet caught the author by surprise (it could have been much more up-to-date).One can hardly expect a foreigner to have a deeper understanding of brazil's history than the person who was the US ambassador for several years, and a self-declared brasilianist. A grain of salt comes from the fact that pro-US, pro-trade behaviors and positions are an obvious consequence of Gordon's origin.It's a shame that the version I read wasn't written after Lula's election and his first day as a president, but I learned more about Brazil in this book than in any other one. Very good job showing data and facts to support the positions and analyzing the underlying facts that took brazil to the position where it is now.