Professor Saraiva's multi-volume History of Portugal is a celebratedscholarly standard work. Yet, when he published a one-volume HistoriaConcisa, it proved a run-away best seller in Portugal, and the televisionseries that went with it became a chart-topper. His latest book, producedespecially for Carcanet's Aspects of Portugal series, is a history of hiscountry, brief, acute and illuminating, written with scholarly insight andwith non-specialist foreign readers specifically in mind. To this main text Ian Robertson, author of the well-known BlueGuide to Portugal, has added a historical gazeteer, brief biographies, chronological tables, maps and other elements which make this an essentialCompanion, the sort of book that a reader in need of accurate, brief andlucid reference will find useful, and every visitor to Portugal will findrewarding. The book is generously illustrated.