Colonization of the Amazon
Deforestation in the Amazon, one of today's top environmental concerns, began during a period of rapid colonization in the 1970s. Throughout that decade, Anna Luiza Ozorio de Almeida, a Stanford-trained economist, conducted a complex and massive economic study of what was going on in the Amazon, who was investing what, what was gained, and what it cost in all its aspects. The Colonization of the Amazon, the resulting work, brings together information on the physical, demographic, institutional, and economic dimensions of directed settlement in the Amazon Basin and raises significant questions about the gains and losses of the settlers, the reasons for these outcomes, and the economic rationale behind the devastation of the rainforest. Particularly illuminating is Almeida's exploration of the role of the frontier in Brazil and her distinction between types of migrants and migrations. She concludes that the political costs avoided by not undertaking agrarian reform are being paid by devastating the Amazon, with the conflict between distribution and conservation steadily worsening. Today, it can no longer be circumvented.
Beyond its central premise, the book can be read through the connected lenses of Nonfiction. Those themes offer useful points of attention as the characters, ideas, or world develop, especially where the book complicates the expectations of its primary category.
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What the reading experience may hold
A fuller profile for choosing with more confidence—not just another copy of the preview.
Nonfiction
Use these as starting points rather than limits; the most memorable books often stretch beyond their catalog labels.
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Balanced tone · Steady pace
A comfortable full-length choice for steady daily reading.
A good fit if…
Readers who want a thoughtful experience and enjoy noticing the connections beneath a book’s surface story.
This book's DNA
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Spoiler-Free Emotional Arc
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A quick reading snapshot
Edition facts and catalog signals to help you decide whether this book fits what you want to read next.
- ISBN-13
- 978-0-2927-5598-7
- Language
- English
- Edition record
- OL28798393M
A more thoughtful way into this book
This guide uses the edition details and category signals above to help you choose deliberately. It does not replace the author's work or a full review.
A comfortable full-length choice for steady daily reading.
Begin with its place in Nonfiction, then notice where the book resists that label.
Read for connection, not completion.
Mark one passage that sharpens the book's central concern and one that complicates it. That tension often reveals more than a quick summary.
Three questions to carry with you
- Whose perspective organizes the story, and whose perspective remains outside it?
- Which sources or lived experiences carry the author’s central argument?
- How does the book change the way you understand its larger subject?
Editorial framework by Wesley Bryan, BookenDeX Founder and Editor.
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