Studies of the United States’ influence on Brazil (and other Latin American nations) have a long tradition. Woodard’s book takes a novel approach to this influence, focusing on the “implantation and adaptation of institutions, practices, products, and modes of thought originally associated with the consumer capitalism of the United States” (4). Rather than offering yet another denunciation or lamentation of U.S. influence, he shows how Brazilians creatively recast this very U.S. form of capitalism into their own particular version from the 1920s to the 1980s. Woodard’s book skillfully explains “how these processes unfolded, identifying and understanding their principal agents, tracing the growth of Brazilian consumer capitalism and the processes by which it became national and contributed to the making of modern Brazil” (7).
One of the most significant contributions of this study is Woodward’s use of the publications of trade and industry associations, their archives, and the accounts of the...