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We all owe Leslie Bethell a huge debt of gratitude for the monumental contribution he has made to Latin American studies. With this long-awaited volume, Bethell has (almost) brought to a close more than three decades of collaboration with hundreds of scholars in multiple languages on several continents - a labour that has produced ten volumes (with vol. 6 in two parts). When planning began for the Cambridge History of Latin America in the late 1970s, Bethell could surely not have imagined the length and scale of the task he would carry out. Volumes 1 and 2 were published in 1984, followed by vols. 3-8, 10 and 11 over the next twelve years. Sections of these volumes were published in paperback versions for classroom use over the same period - another dozen or so books. Bethell's duties as the founder and director of the Centre for Brazilian Studies in the University of Oxford after 1997 delayed this final volume on Brazil, his own area of specialisation. Translations in Spanish (Barcelona), Portuguese (São Paulo) and Chinese (Beijing) are in process (hence the use of 'almost brought to a close' above).
After the long delay, Bethell took the lead role in writing, as well as editing, this volume on Brazil since 1930. He is the principal author of the first four chapters on politics, with the assistance of Celso Castro and Jairo Nicolau. Marcelo de Paiva Abreu is the lead author for three chapters on economics, with the assistance of Rogério L. F. Werneck. Nelson do Valle Silva finishes the volume with a long chapter on Brazilian society. Missing are chapters on Brazilian intellectual and cultural life, a gap Bethell explains by noting the coverage given the topic in vol. 10, Latin America since 1930: Ideas, Culture and Society (1995).
These essays and bibliographies now become the...