John French has received this year’s Warren Dean Memorial Prize for his most recent monograph, Lula and his Politics of Cunning: From Metalworker to President of Brazil (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2020). This prize is given annually by the Conference on Latin American History for a book or article judged to be the most significant work on the history of Brazil published in English. The citation for John’s award reads as follows:
“In this methodologically innovative biography, underpinned by extensive research and theoretical rigor, John French analyzes two entwined aspects of Lula’s trajectory. On the one hand, Professor French studies the long, complex ascent of a migrant from Brazil’s Northeast who became the most important labor leader in Brazilian history. On the other hand, he explores the process by which Lula became a major force in the polarization of Brazilian politics in recent decades. This biography is required reading for anyone wishing to understand the history of Latin America’s largest nation since the middle of the twentieth century, and it is a work of great interest for all those committed to the defense of democracy and to the fight against social inequality.”
History
