Professor Saraiva's multi-volume History of Portugal is a celebrated
scholarly standard work. Yet, when he published a one-volume Historia
Concisa, it proved a run-away best seller in Portugal, and the television
series that went with it became a chart-topper. His latest book, produced
especially for Carcanet's Aspects of Portugal series, is a history of his
country, brief, acute and illuminating, written with scholarly insight and
with non-specialist foreign readers specifically in mind.
    
To this main text Ian Robertson, author of the well-known Blue
Guide to Portugal, has added a historical gazeteer, brief biographies,
chronological tables, maps and other elements which make this an essential
Companion, the sort of book that a reader in need of accurate, brief and
lucid reference will find useful, and every visitor to Portugal will find
rewarding.

The book is generously illustrated.