Description: Portugal is an established member of the European Union, one of the founders of the euro currency and a founding member of NATO. Yet it is an inconspicuous and largely overlooked country on the continent's southwest rim. Barry Hatton shines a light on this enigmatic corner of Europe by blending historical analysis with entertaining personal anecdotes. He describes the idiosyncrasies that make the Portuguese unique and surveys the eventful path that brought them to where they are today. Portugal, which claims Europe's oldest fixed borders, measures just 561 by 218 kilometers. Within that space, however, it offers a patchwork of widely differing and beautiful landscapes. With an easygoing and seductive lifestyle expressed most fully in their love of food, the Portuguese also have an anarchical streak evident in many facets of contemporary life. A veteran journalist and commentator on Portugal, the author gives a thorough overview of his adopted country.
Brief description: Barry Hatton has been a foreign correspondent in Lisbon for more than twenty years. He co-authored a biography, in Portuguese, of Portugal's first woman prime minister, Maria de Lourdes Pintasilgo.
Review Quotes: The question posed by the history of Portugal is, How could a nation fall so precipitously from glorious empire-builder in the vanguard of the fifteenth- and sixteenth-century age of discovery to poor backwater of Europe, languishing outside the sphere of international influence? The author, a Lisbon-based English correspondent, rests his answer on years of studying Portuguese history and the Portuguese national character. Affection for and sober views of his subject impart a geniality and balance to his account of the development of the Portuguese nation, and his book itself answers the need for a good general history for lay readers. What compelled the great overseas Portuguese discoveries is addressed, after which Hatton identifies the conditions that undermined Portugal's new wealth gained from colonizing enterprises in Africa, Asia, and the Americas and that, ironically, inexorability to the nation's decline. The long dictatorship of twentieth-century strongman Antonio Salazar, as well as recent diplomatic and economic situations, is studied alongside such cultural traditions as fado (the national music) and the zesty Portuguese cuisine.