Volker Poelzl

If you're not familiar with the "Culture Shock!" series, these are books intended for travelers going to another country, whether as a business person or sightseer. As such, the book contains information on the history, culture, people, and customs of the topic country.

Though I am not planning on traveling to Brazil anytime soon, our household has a Brazilian exchange student living with us for the semester, and I've been trying to educate myself about his home country. This particular book wasn't perfect for my purposes, but it was still a decent starting point because it touches on the basics of many topics, and has additional suggested readings on the variety of topics it covers. So while I only skimmed the parts about obtaining paperwork and what shots to get before leaving, working in Brazil, or getting an apartment, I found the comments on history, literature, music, and etiquette enlightening.

Of course, I had to keep in mind that this was a very broad introduction. Our student, for example, doesn't particularly like soccer, though the book states that Brazilians follow soccer and that talking about it or knowing the stars can be a great way of starting a conversation. In fact, this is generally true and even with this student, my brother struck up a conversation with him in which he further clarified that he watched the World Cup, but that the best Brazilian players play in the English leagues, so Brazilian soccer just isn't as good. I told my mom that reading it made me wonder what a book would say about traveling to the United States, and that I was realizing how atypical I personally would be for a description that covered all Americans, in general. Overall, this made for an interesting and useful guide. I've used the information more than once to start a conversation with our student, and I have enjoyed learning more about a culture that I previously knew little about.… (mehr)