Don't just see the sights―get to know the people. For many people, Brazil conjures up images of football, Carnaval, and fine coffee, but it's much more than beaches and bossa nova. If we had to choose one word to describe the country, it would probably be diversity. The variety of lifestyles, ethnic groups, landscapes, and climates Brazil encompasses is quite simply enormous. This guide provides you with a comprehensive introduction to everything...

"Germany - the powerhouse of Europe and pillar of the Eurozone - feels reassuringly familiar. However, despite superficial appearances, this is a country that operates very differently from the USA and Britain. German history is more than a thousand years old and the relatively new German nation-state encompasses an astonishing variety of cultural and regional differences. German society is also in a state of flux, as people respond to immigration...

For thousands of years, the Chinese believed that they had created a perfect social system based on Confucian values, tempered by the "Mandate of Heaven." Dynasties came and went, but the essence of being Chinese remained essentially unchanged until the twentieth century. Since then, change has taken place in Chinese society at an unprecedented speed, as the country first experienced the turmoil of civil war and revolution before emerging on to the...

Culture Smart! Singapore will introduce you to the rich and varied customs of this densely populated island-state. It describes its private, social, and business life, and tells you what to expect and how to behave in unfamiliar situations. In doing so it offers you a fuller, more rounded experience of this fascinating, conservative, "can-do" society. Singapore is a land of immigrants. Although the Chinese are by far the largest ethnic group, it is...

Full of colorful details and engrossing stories, Pursuing Respect in the Cannibal Isles shows that the aspirations of individual Americans to be recognized as people worthy of others' respect was a driving force in the global extension of United States influence shortly after the nation's founding. Nancy Shoemaker contends that what she calls extraterritorial Americans constituted the vanguard of a vast, early US global expansion. Using as her...