Professor Stephen G. Bloom’s newest book, The Brazil Chronicles, is a deep dive into his time as a hungry, young journalist working at an English-language startup newspaper, the Latin America Daily Post, in exotic Rio de Janeiro during the late 1970s.

When Bloom graduated from the University of California, Berkeley, afternoon newspapers were on their way out, and with no San Francisco Bay Area newspaper hiring reporters, Bloom took to the road.

“I drove my 1966 VW Bug from San Francisco to Seattle, camping out in rest stops along Interstate 5, and in the mornings, presenting myself at newspapers large and small, looking for work.” 

With no luck securing a reporting job, back in Berkeley, Bloom took a job as a waiter at a popular Italian restaurant while planning his next move. “I got pretty good at opening bottles of Chianti and serving up cannelloni and cannoli, a practice that has proven useful in my later life,” he said.

During a pre-dinner break at the restaurant, Bloom happened onto a story in the Los Angeles Times about an expat English-language newspaper about to begin publishing in Brazil. Bloom send an aerogram to the editor, and three weeks later got a reply: If he could get himself to the South American nation, a reporting job would be his. Bloom promptly enrolled in a ten-week crash course in Portuguese and bought a one-way plane ticket.

“I walked into a steamy, smoky newsroom filled with drug dealers, pornographers, Merry Pranksters, CIA moles, and not just a few very good, very ambitious journalists. I felt like a rumpled, out-of-breath character from a Graham Greene novel.”  

Journalism luminaries such as Gonzo journalist Hunter S. Thompson and pioneering New York Times foreign correspondent Tad Szulc had already worked for the same newspaper. The Latin America Daily Post and its predecessor, the Brazil Herald, turned out to be fertile grounds for the budding writer.

After two years , Bloom didn’t waste any time when he returned to the U.S. He ultimately worked for the Los Angeles Times, San Jose Mercury News, and Dallas Morning News. Bloom’s last newspaper job was senior writer for the San Francisco bureau at the Sacramento Bee. When the Bee closed its big-city bureau, Bloom worked as the press secretary for San Francisco Mayor Frank Jordan. Meanwhile, he imported his journalism skills, teaching at Berkeley and at what is now known as California State University, East Bay. 

When the opportunity came up to join the faculty at The University of Iowa in 1993, Bloom and his wife, Iris Frost, and their two-year-old son moved 2,000 miles east. 

“It was an invitation to bring my passion and enthusiasm to a new generation of journalists. All told, I’ve taught somewhere around 5,000 Iowa students.”

Bloom has mentored and advised scores of students, many of whom have gone on to write their own books, as well as work at places such as CNN, The New York Times, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, and Chicago Tribune.

During his three-decades-long tenure at The University of Iowa, Bloom has written seven critically acclaimed nonfiction books. His first book, the award-winning Postville, published in 2000, was followed by The Audacity of Inez Burns; The Oxford Project; Tears of Mermaids; and Blue Eyes, Brown Eyes.

His latest book, The Brazil Chronicles, is an affectionate recall of a past era seen through the eyes of a young, impressionable journalist. It not only illuminates the practice of journalism at a transitional moment viewed from afar, but also larger seminal issues, such as what it means to be an American. The book has gotten rave reviews as an intimate and revealing coming-of-age memoir.

Larry Rohter, the former Brazil correspondent for The New York Times and author of Into the Amazon, called The Brazil Chronicles one of the best books ever written about newspapers. “With its cast of misfits–ranging from neurotic dreamers and ambitious novices to hard-drinking swashbucklers and smooth glad-handers––it reads at times like a real-life version of satirical novels about journalism like Evelyn Waugh’s Scoop or George Gissing’s New Grub Street. But it also zeroes in on the internal conflicts inherent to putting out any newspaper, such as tensions between the business and reporting sides, as well as others that are unique to working under a military dictatorship.”

Andrei Codrescu, the venerable commentator on NPR, said, "Steeped in facts and tropical heat, this memoir will make you young. A budding journalist in 1970s Brazil uncovers a world of expats and adventurers in a historically fraught time. Reading it made me want to have a caipirinha in Copacabana with this vivid storyteller.”

Bloom maintains that his teaching at Iowa is at the center of how he approaches journalism.

“While I’ve covered the byzantine politics of foreign nations, numbing global disasters, and reckless world despots, most of my career has turned out to be writing about Iowa as a metaphor to try to understand why people do what they do,” said Bloom.