|
The Accidental President of Brazil: A Memoir | 
 enlarge | Author: Fernando Henrique Cardoso
Publisher: PublicAffairs
Category: Book
List Price: $14.95
Buy Used: $4.23
You Save: $10.72 (72%)
New (28) Used (17) from $4.23
Rating:  14 reviews
Sales Rank: 207223
Media: Paperback
Pages: 320
Number Of Items: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.7
Dimensions (in): 8.1 x 5.4 x 0.9
ISBN: 158648429X
Dewey Decimal Number: 981.064092
EAN: 9781586484293
ASIN: 158648429X
Publication Date: March 26, 2007
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Shipping: Expedited shipping available
Shipping: International shipping available
Condition: Standard used condition.
| |
| Also Available In:
|
| Similar Items:
|
| Editorial Reviews:
Product Description
Fernando Henrique Cardoso received a phone call in the middle of the night asking him to be the new Finance Minister of Brazil. As he put the phone down and stared into the darkness of his hotel room, he feared he'd been handed a political death sentence. The year was 1993, and he would be responsible for an economy that had had seven different currencies in the previous eight years to cope with inflation that had run at 3000 percent a year. Brazil had a habit of chewing up finance ministers with the ferocity of an Amazon piranha.
This was just one of the turns in a largely unscripted and sometimes unwanted political career. In exile during the harshest period of the junta that ruled Brazil for twenty years, Cardoso started his political life with a tentative run for the Federal Senate in 1978. Within fifteen years, and despite himself, this former sociologist was running the country.
And what a country! Brazil, it is often said, is on the edge of modernity, striding with one foot in mid-air towards the future, the other still rooted deep in a traditional past. It is a land of sophisticated music and brutal gold-digging, of the next global superpower and the last old-time coffee plantations. It is gloriously ungovernable, irrepressibly attractive, and home to the family, friends and extraordinary life of Fernando Henrique Cardoso. This is his story and his love song to his country.
|
| Customer Reviews: Read 9 more reviews...
An Imminently Readable Introduction to the Nation of Brazil--its history, politics, economy, and culture June 30, 2006
John D. Sherwood (Washington, DC USA)
15 out of 15 found this review helpful
In planning a trip to Brazil, I was looking for a readable history of Brazil's past 100 years to give me an understanding of the nation, its history, and its challenges. Fernando Henrique Cardoso's book appeared to be a perfect choice: it combines history, and social and economic analysis with a personal biography of one of Brazil's finest presidents.
Like most autobiographies, The Accidental President of Brazil is not an objective work. Cardoso does defend his policies and programs, especially his work in developing Brazil's modern currency--the Real. Cardoso, to his credit, did prove to be an effective inflation fighter who instilled some discipline into the samba economy of Brazil. He also strengthened the country as a democracy and won kudos from foreign leaders, the IMF, and the World Bank.
However, Brazil's problems are far from over. Parts of its major cities--the notorious favelas--are ungovernable, and are giving the country a terrible reputation abroad. Poverty and unemployment, which go hand in hand with urban slums, also plague the country. Cardoso draws an interesting analogy between the favelas and the Bronx and Harlem, New York, in the 1970s. Harlem, he argues, looked ungovernable in 1975, but now it is a center of urban renewal and culture. President Clinton even has an office there. In short, if we take a long term view of the favela problem, he explains, positive change is a true possibility. After all, property within a stone's throw of Copacabana beach cannot be slum for ever.
The inevitability of progress sounds like the positivist philosophy of Brazil's founders, and in fact, Mr. Cardoso's grandfather was one of a group of military officers who overthrew Emperor Dom Pedro II and founded the modern state. Cardoso, though, is far too complex to fall into a positivist trap. As an academic, he's often more concerned about explaining Brazil's problems and possibilities than establishing his place in history with a laudatory biography. He employs self-deprecating humor throughout the book and is as quick to point out his failures as his successes. The more I read the book, the more I came to admire the man. I also now know much more about the world fifth largest country, and the biggest economy in Latin America than I did before reading the book. Will Brazil be the next India? Read this book and judge for yourself. Do Brazil!
An Entertaining and Insightful Memoir March 4, 2006
Ted Goertzel (MEDFORD, NJ USA)
9 out of 11 found this review helpful
This entertaining and insightful memoir brings together the best of Cardoso's insights as sociologist, politician, president and elder statesman. It is must reading for everyone interested in Brazil's past or concerned about its future.
Fernando Henrique Cardoso began his career as a struggling Marxist sociologist ruminating on stuffy topics such as "the objective possibility of the negation of the situation." After two terms as President of Brazil, he understandably finds academic sociology dull and dogmatic. With a little help from journalist Brian Winter, he has written a fascinating book about his own experiences with the people who run Brazil. He is uniquely qualified because he has known most of the personalities who have shaped Brazil's destiny for half a century, and even longer if we include those he met around the dinner table as a child.
See my full review on www.infobrazil.com
A personal and national history - and a good story July 17, 2006
J. M Quirk
9 out of 9 found this review helpful
Cardoso hails from Brazil's first family, and he weaves a very readable history of Brazil through the stories of his grandfather, father and family friends (and enemies). The author evolves from professor to exile to president, forging Brazil's economic reform policies for a decade and staking his own claim on the country's history.
A left-leaning sociologist-turned-economist, Cardoso became famous in the 1970s for the dependency theory (dependencia), trying to explain the relations between the U.S. and Latin America (and first- and third-worlds more generally). But as finance minister in the 1990s, he authored quite un-socialist policies of the Plano Real, breaking inflation through budget cuts, currency reform and attracting foreign investment. He identifies himself with the New Left of Clinton and Blair.
This (I hope) will be effective in the classroom as a personal introduction to a fascinating and important country, and as an insider's perspective on the challenges and responses in globalization-era Latin America. Even allowing for the risk of poetic license in autobiographers and co-writers, the book at times reads like an adventure, with stirring characters, dramatic crises and indefatigable, inveterate hope.
About democracy April 13, 2006
J Parreira
8 out of 11 found this review helpful
Brazil is a country that has struggled for many years to become itself a modern democracy. Because of its size and its economic imoprtance, it has the power to influence strongly many of its South American neighbours. The fact is that Cardoso is the man responsible for the consolidation of democracy and democratic institutions in BRazil. A sociologist, university professor, because of many interesting twists and turns, he became the president of Brazil during 8 years. In this period he not only stabilised Brazil from an economic perspective (before Cardoso inflation reached 80% a month) but also from an institutional point of view. He was able to catalize an important group of political forces in the country, under a modern social democratic ideological frame and to rebuild BRazil after 20+ years of military dictatorship and a series of weird presidents that were elected after the end of this period. He diminished the role of the state in Brazlian economy, opening space for the free enterprise, and through a clear pro-business approach broughtcompetitiveness for Brazilian economy, that was casted in decades of protectionism. He is a role modern, a president that is very rare to find in a region like Latin America; a sophisticated intellectual with strong democratic values. His life should be studied by everyone interested in this region from a geopolitical point of view.
Great Book from a Great President May 3, 2006
Nicolas Shumway (Austin, Texas)
5 out of 7 found this review helpful
First the disclosure. I am a longtime admirer of Fernando Henrique Cardoso, and Brian Winter is a former student of mine. Neither consideration, however, accounts for my high regard for this engaging and informative book. For this is a book that not only recounts the memoirs of one of the greatest Latin American leaders of recent times but also serves as an excellent introduction to over a century of Brazilian history.
Grandson and son of military men, Cardoso grew up on politics. Yet, he chose to become a university professor whose groundbreaking research on race and poverty brought him international prominence as a sociologist. Exiled by the military governments that took power in 1964, Cardoso eventually returned to Brazil. He gradually, or "accidentally" as he says, became enmeshed in politics. After the country returned to democracy, he accepted several cabinet posts and decisively affected Brazilian history as finance minister in the early 1990s by heading the team that created the "Plano Real." Brilliantly conceived, the Plano Real gave Brazil a solid and predictable currency for the first time since the 1940s and helped catapult Cardoso to the presidency in 1994. Walking a fine line between liberal reforms and an abiding concern for the economic injustice that has besieged Brazil since colonial times, Cardoso brought enlightened reforms to virtually every area of Brazilian public life, leaving a legacy of improved education, better health care, and significant improvements in infrastructure. Perhaps his most lasting accomplishment, however, was giving strength and permanence to institutional government in Brazil as symbolized by the exemplary transition of power from Cardoso to Lula in a country that for decades had reeled between chaos and autocracy.
The book also tells a great deal about global politics and Brazil's increasing importance in the world order-including trenchant comments about world leaders like Fidel Castro, Bill Clinton, and George W. Bush. Cardoso, however, never ceases being an intellectual. Indeed, a particularly appealing aspect of the book is his mix of intelligence with compassion, analytical distance with hands-on experience. According to reports in Brazil, Brian Winters was chosen to assist in this project not only because of his accomplishments as a Reuters reporter in both Argentina and Mexico, but also because of his ability to ask Cardoso the right questions and thereby ensure that the book speak to US readers. This collaboration produced an excellent book, especially for American readers. I recommend it to you as I will surely recommend it to my students and colleagues.
Nicolas Shumway, Director
Teresa Lozano Long Institute of Latin American Studies
Univesity of Texas at Austin
|
|
|
|
| |
