‘Brazil is not for beginners.’ Jeff Garmany and Anthony Pereira anchor their text, Understanding Contemporary Brazil, in the way many of us – experts, scholars and students alike – are first introduced to the study of the nation. In some ways, the phrase is wielded as a threat when we embark on the journey; from more familiar or experienced travellers, it elicits a chuckle. Scholars and students of Brazil all encounter this phrase, in one way or another, at one point or another. And with this phrase, the 252 pages of Understanding Contemporary Brazil serve both as threshold and as admission into the immersive and generous space that is the study of Brazil. Everyone is invited. Everyone is welcome.

The text is divided into ten thematic chapters, bounded by an Introduction and an Afterword. In the opening pages, Garmany and Pereira make clear the intent, the role and the function of the text. It is not to serve as an expansive and all-encompassing tome. It is an attempt to contextualise and frame key questions and pressing discussions surrounding the study of Brazil. Although with attention to the historic and the historical, it is not focused exclusively or extensively within this realm, rather using it as foundational and structuring. While not a textbook per se, each chapter offers the preliminary tools necessary for an understanding of the more complex and complicated social, political and cultural elements of each topic rendered both in the structural and the macro, as well as in the more intimate and micro. Covering politics and governance, economic development and social policy, race and ethnicity, the urban, social movements and mobilisation, the environment, spirituality, foreign policy, and soccer, the text does not shy away from Brazil's extensive possibilities of study. Rather, it works to embrace, with care and with purpose, the multiplicity of what can be done and what can be done well.

The early chapters introduce the reader to the rhythm of the text, each following roughly the same composition of introductory historical context to structural and thematic specifics to relevant and compelling contemporary example(s). The tempo of the text, slow but assured, builds to a vibrant climax, most noticeably, for me, in the chapter on the environment. Garmany and Pereira's masterful direction becomes evident when the mechanisms outlined in previous pages seamlessly fall into place. Elemental contributions in the understandings of social movements, race and ethnicity and the law come to the fore here, without which the chapter would feel incomplete. How can one understand the complex socio-political and cultural significance that is this generative topic without all of these previous components? What is an understanding of the environment without history, without struggle, without race? As reader, you can see the connections, the rationale behind the order of the chapters and then their intricate connections becoming evident. From the individual threads previously woven, suddenly the entire web emerges. Garmany and Pereira's most striking contribution within the text is their attention to the bibliographies at the culmination of each chapter, where readers can find additional works and recommended scholarship in both English and Portuguese to facilitate further inquiry. The book, both in word and in form, not only serves as invitation, but also extends itself beyond the expectations of what that might mean. It offers readers a place to begin and more, should we wish to accept.

It should not be taken lightly, however, that this text was written and edited in a pre-Bolsonaro era, although published in the first months of his fledgling administration. Of course, this is due to no fault of the authors, who worked impressively to include small but significant mentions of Bolsonaro and his government in the body of the work, as well as a pensive and speculative Afterword. A deadline is a deadline after all and historic events do not appear to respect the same timelines as those outlined by publishers. Rather than critique the authors, I offer this note, both alongside the text's own anticipatory considerations and in the light of what has come to be known in living life in real time, as a word of caution to the readers: the destruction wrought by Bolsonaro and his government onto every facet of Brazilian society – education, healthcare, the environment, foreign policy and international relations, human rights and struggles for equality, etc. – cannot and should not be underestimated. And then, there is the Covid-19 pandemic and not just the government's lack of action, but its deliberate and directed sabotage of anything and everything that might have, in any way, prevented what many Brazilians have referred to as a national genocide.

Though Garmany and Pereira attempt to tackle the feat of rendering contemporary Brazil understandable and, by the end, understood, many of the old assumptions or ways of knowing, built upon and threaded with the historical foundations and temporal patterns that the text outlines and even itself rests upon, may not carry over. Much of the ‘tried and true’ in understanding Brazil may no longer be. That being said, the text successfully establishes its parameters: ‘Rather than describing what Brazil is like, or providing a general overview of current events, [Garmany and Pereira] seek to offer critical insight on key subjects and debates’ (p. 1). But it also achieves much more. It serves as a Brazil reader, a companion to an extensive endeavour. It is a text for the new student and for the researcher familiar with the study of Brazil, for the educator and for the curious, both inside and beyond the academy. It is a thorough text of the contemporary with anchorage in and echo to the historic. It is a book which renders Brazil and the studies derived thereof less intimidating, a text which can be used as a place to begin or as a space to depart, around which a course or syllabus may be built, or a case study organised. It is both comprehensive and detailed, expansive and intricate, practical and generous.

One thing, however, continues to offer some degree of certainty: ‘Brazil is not for beginners.’ Tom Jobim's famous words are offered to readers as literary ‘footing and fastening’, and, in many implicit and explicit ways, drive the text's very production. It is something that Garmany and Pereira do not avoid, but, if anything, fully accept the challenge and work to tackle it head on. Even so, if this is something on which we can continue to depend, we must all begin somewhere. For the experienced and the well-versed, for the endlessly inquisitive and the newly interested, this text is a meaningful contribution to the field of trying to understand the complexity that is Brazil, in its many facets, and the scholarship that moves to guide and accompany this journey. It is a text that, in some ways, will need updating if it is to live up to its name of Understanding Contemporary Brazil. Nevertheless, its present contributions cannot and should not be diminished. Its second edition is eagerly awaited.