Brazil
Aside from its stunning beauty and renowned racial diversity, Brazil is gaining world status as a member of BRIC, the emerging force in world geopolitics and economics. Palin offers a daily diary of his trips there, 74 in all, starting in the rain forest of northwest Brazil, reachable only by plane for a two-day visit with the Yanomami. He goes on to an ecolodge in the Amazon on the Rio Negro, a fish market in Belem, capoeira dances in Salvador, gold mines in Ouro Preto, the Academy of Coffee in Belo Horizonte, the unabashed nearly-nude sunbathing on Copacabana Beach, the surf craze in the favelas of Rio de Janeiro, the set of a telenovela in Barra da Tijuca, and the fashion world of São Paulo. The photographs are beautiful, but just as captivating are Palin’s conversations with Brazilians, from the Beyoncé of the Amazon to a bookmaker in Rio, among others, discussing sports, ecology, commerce, religion, music, food, culture, and the future of Brazil, host of the 2014 World Cup and 2016 Olympics, as its world status rises. --Vanessa Bush