This month’s book was The Accidental President of Brazil: A Memoir by Fernando Henrique Cardozo. Cardozo was one of the first elected presidents after the military dictatorship in Brazil. Though his leadership and vision, Brazil started its assent. As finance minister he put an end to hyperinflation and as president he continued sound economic policies while working on Brazil’s many social problems.
My favorite aspect of the book is that it is written by someone who knows and loves Brazil. Cardoso is from a prominent military family (he is a sociology professor and did not enter the military) and he was given a great vantage point to many historic events in the history of Brazil. While the book is a personal history, so much of Cardoso’s history is wrapped up in Brazil’s history. The book becomes a great overview of recent (20th and 21st Century) Brazilian history.
As for the title, I don’t think that it was a complete accident that Cardoso became the president of Brazil. I think that to become a leader of that stature, you need a mountain of ambition, and I think that Cardoso is a highly ambitious person. If his original ambition was to be a great sociologist, he moved with political events and ended up shifting his ambition to national and international leadership. Personally, I don’t think there’s anything wrong with that, but I don’t think his presidency was a complete accident.
If you want to learn more about Brazil, I would highly recommend this book. It’s not very critical of Cardoso’s policies (hey, he wrote the book) and comes across as having an agenda, but I’d buy it again.
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