...[an] enjoyable, deeply reported account of Brazil’s outsize collection of tycoons ... Brazillionaires offers more than a flat collection of billionaire tales. Cuadros shrewdly presents his collage of immense wealth against an underlying background of corruption.
...a clear-eyed and often funny travelogue through the operatic lives of the country’s ultra-wealthy and their baneful relationship with the state ... Cuadros’s blend of memoir, exposé and historical narrative provides a wonderful vehicle to explain how this state of affairs was reached.
...a propulsive and engaging portrait of modern Brazil ... The book may be more revealing than its subjects would like. In fact, it will not be available in Brazil: One of the billionaires in question was unhappy with what he saw in drafts and publishers got spooked ... if Brazillionaires is superficially about Brazil, it also aims to be about more than that. Brazil, in important ways, is more representative of the world than any other country.
...a capable and thorough examination of the kinds of Brazilians who profited from the Games ... Brazillionaires offers a comprehensive portrait of Brazilian society, including the favelas.
