As the most comprehensive introduction to Brazil available in English, this book reveals Brazil to be a land of the marvellous and the mystical, as well as the sublime and the tragic. A country which encompasses half of South America and one-third of all Latin Americans, Brazil is unmasked in this study as a nation defined by paradoxes: immense wealth surrounded by widespread poverty, a modern industrial infrastructure alongside an outmoded agricultural system, a largely white South and a Northeastern coast that is overwhelmingly of African descent. This book is written for the non-specialist, and it serves as a wide-ranging and multidisciplinary survey of Brazil's history, regions, society culture, politics, and economy.