“One of Maxwell’s achievements in this volume of essays is to make his own and others' work on Luso-Brazilian history and civilization both interesting and accessible to general readers. But he has done more than this. He has also shown why Luso-Brazilian history matters, and how it can and should be more effectively integrated into the broader picture of the history of Europe and the wider world.”
Sir John H. Elliott - The New York Review of Books


“[A] Latin primer … this is lively history, made more readable by fascinating glimpses into the historian's own life and his passion for Brazil. […] More importantly, Maxwell always keeps a firm eye on the bigger picture.”
Richard Lapper - Financial Times


“Perhaps the only scholar in the English-speaking world capable of skillfully handling all of Luso-Brazilian history, Maxwell writes about subjects as diverse as Columbus, pirates of the Caribbean, the history of chocolate, Jesuits, the Amazon, the slave trade and Yale University, Macao, and the late historian C. R. Boxer. […] Naked Tropics is the fruit of 40 years of transatlantic travels and study, exposing the reader to many facets of the Luso-Brazilian world and its most astute historical interpreter.”
Marshall Eakin - Foreign Affairs


"... Il s'agit, véritablement, d'une lecture d'ensemble de l'histoire brésilienne de 1500 à nos jours, accompagnée d'une réflexion sur un ensemble de questions de méthode historique. Maxwell arrive, avec rare habileté, à inscrire, au long de sa narrative, ses préoccupations théoriques et méthodologiques. Cependant, pour l'analyse de ce livre, cela vaudrait la peine de prendre la direction contraire, cherchant à distinguer la grande narrative composée par de successifs fragments de ce qui constitue un consistant agenda de vigilance réflexive sur comment écrire l'histoire d'une nation qui fut colonie..."
Diogo Ramado Curto - Annales. Histoire, Sciences Sociales