Beneath Venezuelan soil lies an ocean of crude—the world’s largest reserves—an oil patch that shaped the nature of the global energy business. Unfortunately, a dysfunctional anti-American, leftist government controls this vast resource and has used its wealth to foster voter support, ultimately wreaking economic havoc.


"Crude Nation" reveals the ways in which this mismanagement has led to Venezuela’s economic ruin and turned the country into a cautionary tale for the world. Raúl Gallegos, a former Caracas-based oil correspondent, paints a picture both vivid and analytical of the country’s economic decline, the government’s foolhardy economic policies, and the wrecked lives of Venezuelans.


 Without transparency, the Venezuelan government uses oil money to subsidize life for its citizens in myriad unsustainable ways, while regulating nearly every aspect of day-to-day existence in Venezuela. This has created a paradox in which citizens can fill up the tanks of their SUVs for less than one American dollar while simultaneously enduring nationwide shortages of staples such as milk, sugar, and toilet paper. Gallegos’s insightful analysis shows how mismanagement has ruined Venezuela again and again over the past century and lays out how Venezuelans can begin to fix their country, a nation that can play an important role in the global energy industry.


  

Crude Nation: How Oil Riches Ruined Venezuela

It is astonishing that Simon Bolívar, the great Liberator of South America, is not better known in the United States. He freed six countries from Spanish rule, traveled more than 75,000 miles on horseback to do so, and became the greatest figure in Latin American history. His life is epic, heroic, straight out of Hollywood--he fought battle after battle in punishing terrain, forged uncertain coalitions of competing forces and races, lost his beautiful wife soon after they married and never remarried (although he did have a succession of mistresses, including one who held up the revolution and another who saved his life), and he died relatively young, uncertain whether his achievements would endure.

Bolívar: American Liberator

O'Hanlon takes us into the bug-ridden rain forest between the Orinoco and the Amazon--infested with jaguars and piranhas, where men would kill over a bottle of ketchup and where the locals may be the most violent people on earth (next to hockey fans).

In Trouble Again: A Journey Between the Orinoco and the Amazon

Cuando Teresa de la Parra (Ana Teresa Parra Sanojo, París, 1889 - Madrid, 1936) publicó esta primera y gran novela, "Ifigenia", estaba muy lejos de sospechar que esa obra la iba a convertir en la escritora más importante que ha dado al mundo Venezuela, y en una de las autoras más relevantes del pasado siglo en lengua castellana.

"Ifigenia" fue un título puesto in extremis, justo antes de que la novela se publicara. Inicialmente Teresa de la Parra la había titulado "Diario de una señorita que escribió porque se fastidiaba". Y ese fastidio, ese aburri­miento era el de una joven educada en París que de regreso a su tierra natal, Venezuela, topa con una sociedad que no le permitía expresar sus ideas ni elegir su destino.

La crítica ha señalado en "Ifigenia" dos niveles, perfec­tamente complementarios: de una parte, ofrece una dura crítica de la sociedad de su tiempo, crítica que la indispuso con el entonces dictador venezolano Juan Vicente Gómez, lo que la llevó a regresar a España, donde había cursado estudios; de otra parte, es un relato intimista, impregnado de humor y de melancolía, que como señaló Arturo Úslar Pietri, sólo podía escribirlo una mujer («Libro mujer: atractivo, oscuro, turbador», escribió Arturo Úslar Pietri en un ensayo). Un relato ágil, lleno de ritmo, plagado de ensoñaciones y anhelos, de decepciones y esperanzas.

Ifigenia

In the aftermath of Hugo Chávez's death, the inside story of his life, his Venezuela, and his legacy.
 
 Hugo Chávez was a phenomenon. He has been compared to Napoléon, Nasser, Perón, and Castro, but the truth is there has never been a leader like him. He was democratically elected, reigned like a monarch from a digital throne, and provoked adoration and revulsion in equal measure. Future historians will study his rule for what it says about the early twenty-first century. How did a charismatic autocrat seduce not just a nation but a significant part of world opinion? How did he make people laugh and weep and applaud, as if on command? And how did he continue to stay in power despite the crumbling of Venezuela?

 When he first came to power in 1999, Chávez promised a democratic revolution to transform his country. In Venezuela and elsewhere, he became a symbol of hope and freedom for his people. Yet in his thirteen years as president, Chávez seized control of the hugely lucrative Venezuelan oil industry, consolidated government authority under the presidency, allowed basic government functions to wither, jailed and excommunicated political opponents, created a personality cult, and courted Castro and Ahmadinejad, all while occupying much of Venezuela’s airwaves with his long-running television show, "¡Alo Presidente!"

 In "Comandante," acclaimed journalist Rory Carroll breaches the walls of Miraflores Palace to tell the inside story of Chávez's life and his political court in Caracas. Based on interviews with ministers, aides, courtiers, and citizens, this intimate piece of reportage chronicles a unique experiment in power, which veers among enlightenment, tyranny, comedy, and farce. Carroll investigates the almost religious devotion of millions of Venezuelans who still regard Chávez as a savior and the loathing of those who brand him a dictator. In beautiful prose that blends the lyricism and strangeness of magical realism with the brutal, ugly truth of authoritarianism—a powerful combination reminiscent of Ryszard Kapuscinski's "The Emperor"—Rory Carroll has written a cautionary tale for our times.

 

 


Comandante: Hugo Chávez's Venezuela

Hugo Chavez and the Bolivarian Revolution

A companion piece to The Concept of Anxiety, this work continues Søren Kierkegaard’s radical and comprehensive analysis of human nature in a spectrum of possibilities of existence. Present here is a remarkable combination of the insight of the poet and the contemplation of the philosopher.

In The Sickness unto Death, Kierkegaard moves beyond anxiety on the mental-emotional level to the spiritual level, where — in contact with the eternal — anxiety becomes despair. Both anxiety and despair reflect the misrelation that arises in the self when the elements of the synthesis — the infinite and the finite — do not come into proper relation to each other. Despair is a deeper expression for anxiety and is a mark of the eternal, which is intended to penetrate temporal existence.

The Sickness Unto Death: A Christian Psychological Exposition for Upbuilding and Awakening

From one of Venezuela’s leading writers, "Memories of Altagracia" depicts the eccentricities of rural life through the eyes of a small boy. Garmenida’s luminous prose reflects the wonder of this world, a world that becomes increasingly harsh as childhood slips by.

Memories of Altagracia

Told with gripping intensity, "It Would be Night in Caracas" chronicles one woman’s desperate battle to survive amid the dangerous, sometimes deadly, turbulence of modern Venezuela and the lengths she must go to secure her future.

In Caracas, Venezuela, Adelaida Falcon stands over an open grave. Alone, except for harried undertakers, she buries her mother–the only family Adelaida has ever known.

Numb with grief, Adelaida returns to the apartment they shared. Outside the window that she tapes shut every night—to prevent the tear gas raining down on protesters in the streets from seeping in. When looters masquerading as revolutionaries take over her apartment, Adelaida resists and is beaten up. It is the beginning of a fight for survival in a country that has disintegrated into violence and anarchy, where citizens are increasingly pitted against each other. But as fate would have it, Adelaida is given a gruesome choice that could secure her escape.

Filled with riveting twists and turns, and told in a powerful, urgent voice, "It Would Be Night in Caracas" is a chilling reminder of how quickly the world we know can crumble.

It Would Be Night in Caracas

A stolen heirloom painting...a shipboard murder...Can Simon and the O'Keefe clan unravel the mystery?

Thirteen-year-old Simon Renier has no idea when he boards the "M.S. Orion" with his cousin Forsyth Phair that the journey will take him not only to Venezuela, but into his past as well. His original plan to return a family heirloom, portrait of Simon Bolivar, to its rightful place is sidetracked when cousin Forsyth is found murdered. Then, when the portrait is stolen, all passengers and crew become suspect.

Simon's newfound friends, Poly and Charles O'Keefe, and their scientist father help Simon to confront the danger that threaten him. But Simon alone must face up to his fears. What has happened to the treasured portrait? And who among them is responsible for the theft and the murder?

Dragons in the Waters (O'Keefe Family, #2)

On April 11, 2002, nearly a million Venezuelans marched on the presidential palace to demand the resignation of President Hugo Chavez. Led by Pedro Carmona and Carlos Ortega, the opposition represented a cross-section of society furious with Chavez's economic policies, specifically his mishandling of the Venezuelan oil industry. But as the day progressed the march turned violent, sparking a military revolt that led to the temporary ousting of Chavez. Over the ensuing, turbulent seventy-two hours, Venezuelans would confront the deep divisions within their society and ultimately decide the best course for their country —and its oil—in the new century.An exemplary piece of narrative journalism, "The Silence and the Scorpion" provides rich insight into the complexities of modern Venezuela.

The Silence and the Scorpion: The Coup Against Chavez and the Making of Modern Venezuela

Latin America’s experiments in direct democracy

Since 2011, a wave of popular uprisings has swept the globe, taking shape in the Occupy movement, the Arab Spring, 15M in Spain, and the anti-austerity protests in Greece. The demands have been varied, but have expressed a consistent commitment to the ideals of radical democracy.

Similar experiments began appearing across Latin America twenty-five years ago, just as the left fell into decline in Europe. In Venezuela, poor barrio residents arose in a mass rebellion against neoliberalism, ushering in a government that institutionalized the communes already forming organically. In "Building the Commune", George Ciccariello-Maher travels through these radical experiments, speaking to a broad range of community members, workers, students and government officials. Assessing the projects’ successes and failures, "Building the Commune" provides lessons and inspiration for the radical movements of today.

Building the Commune: Radical Democracy in Venezuela

Three Gringos in Venezuela and Central America

Las lanzas coloradas

Canaima

This new and expanded edition of "Dragon in the Tropics"—the widely acclaimed account of how president Hugo Chávez (1999–2013) revamped Venezuela's political economy—examines the electoral decline of Chavismo after Chavez's death and the policies adopted by his successor, Nicolás Maduro, to cope with the economic chaos inherited from previous radical populist policies. Corrales and Penfold argue that Maduro has had to struggle with the inherent contradictions of a large and heterogeneous social coalition, a declining oil sector, the strength of entrenched military interests, and fewer resources to appease international allies, which have strenghtened the autocratic features of an already consolidated hybrid regime. In examining the new political realities of Venezuela, the authors offer lessons on the dynamics of succession in hybrid regimes. This book is a must-read for scholars and analysts of Latin America.Praise for the first edition of "Dragon in the Tropics
"
This is the most objective, comprehensive and interesting book I have read on what has
happened in Venezuela since Hugo Chávez took power in the late 1990s. It shows why
most of the common explanations of the country's social and political convulsions are
superficial and often flawed. A must-read. 
—Moisés Naím, Senior Associate, Carnegie Endowment for International PeaceHugo Chávez and his 'Bolivarian Revolution' to construct '21st century socialism' in
Venezuela and reshape the international order have attracted a great deal of polarized comment: either sycophantic praise or unmitigated condemnation, neither backed up by sound data or profound analysis. Dragon in the Tropics escapes this pattern. It provides a thoughtful, perceptive, balanced but critical, nuanced and illuminating assessment, grounded in rich and revealing data, and deep knowledge of both Venezuela and of comparative politics and political economy. Highly recommended. 
-Abraham F. Lowenthal, Professor of International Relations, University of Southern CaliforniaCorrales and Penfold have written a wide-ranging and thought-provoking interpretation
of how Hugo Chávez has shaped Venezuelan society, and the country's regional and global role, over the past decade. The book is conceptually innovative, empirically
rich, and cogently argued. Its keen insights into Venezuela's evolving political economy
represent an invaluable contribution. 
-Michael Shifter, President, Inter-American DialogueJavier Corrales and Michael Penfold are two of the most outstanding analysts of contemporary Venezuela. This accessible and clear-eyed book provides a comprehensive
overview of Venezuelan politics, economics, and foreign policy over the last decade. No one interested in understanding the rise of radical populism, the distortions inherent
in the oil economy, and the progressive deterioration of democratic institutions should fail to read this book. 
-Cynthia Arnson, Woodrow Wilson International Center for ScholarsAn engaging and comprehensive portrait of the Chávez government's key economic and political features.
—Political Science Quarterly

Dragon in the Tropics: Venezuela and the Legacy of Hugo Chavez (Latin America Initiative)

Eugenia Blanc es una joven caraqueña de clase media que desea irse definitivamente del país, hastiada de la vida sosa e insoportable de la ciudad. Luis Tévez, su compañero de clases, es un joven provocador, iconoclasta, contestatario. Ambos deciden emprender juntos un viaje a Altamira de Cáceres, en búsqueda del abuelo de Eugenia, el único que puede facilitarle la salida del país. "Blue Label / Etiqueta Azul" muestra en sus páginas el drama interior del personaje así como la conflictividad de un país fracturado por la desesperanza. Con un habla fresca y lúdica, los personajes se relacionan con una naturalidad que es pocas veces lograda en la novelística de nuestras letras.""

Blue Label / Etiqueta Azul

Beginning in the late 1950s political leaders in Venezuela built what they celebrated as Latin America’s most stable democracy. But outside the staid halls of power, in the gritty barrios of a rapidly urbanizing country, another politics was rising—unruly, contentious, and clamoring for inclusion.

	Based on years of archival and ethnographic research in Venezuela’s largest public housing community, "Barrio Rising" delivers the first in-depth history of urban popular politics before the Bolivarian Revolution, providing crucial context for understanding the democracy that emerged during the presidency of Hugo Chávez.

	In the mid-1950s, a military government bent on modernizing Venezuela razed dozens of slums in the heart of the capital Caracas, replacing them with massive buildings to house the city’s working poor. The project remained unfinished when the dictatorship fell on January 23, 1958, and in a matter of days city residents illegally occupied thousands of apartments, squatted on green spaces, and renamed the neighborhood to honor the emerging democracy: the 23 de Enero (January 23).

	During the next thirty years, through eviction efforts, guerrilla conflict, state violence, internal strife, and official neglect, inhabitants of "el veintitrés" learned to use their strategic location and symbolic tie to the promise of democracy in order to demand a better life. Granting legitimacy to the state through the vote but protesting its failings with violent street actions when necessary, they laid the foundation for an expansive understanding of democracy—both radical and electoral—whose features still resonate today.

	Blending rich narrative accounts with incisive analyses of urban space, politics, and everyday life, "Barrio Rising" offers a sweeping reinterpretation of modern Venezuelan history as seen not by its leaders but by residents of one of the country’s most distinctive popular neighborhoods.

Barrio Rising: Urban Popular Politics and the Making of Modern Venezuela

With an upcoming election, Chávez's involvement with U.S. oil exports, and the country becoming a leader of an increasingly united South America, this volume provides necessary background information to understand how Venezuela became what it is today. 
The history begins with Columbus's third voyage of discovery from Spain. Spanish explorers named the land "Little Venice" for the native homes built on stilts at the water's edge. Tracing the nation's 300 years as a Spanish colony through a brief unification followed by civil war, Tarver brings Venezuela's dramatic history to life. Highlighting events including the discovery of oil in the 1900s and the establishment of democratic government in 1958, Tarver offers a comprehensive chronicle that contextualizes the current unrest under the leadership of Hugo Chávez. 



The History of Venezuela

La autora narra en una especie de autobiografía, los episodios vividos durante su infancia en la hacienda paterna, las costumbres de la vida en el campo, las relaciones familiares, los juegos e inquietudes de las cinco hermanitas que convivían en ese sencillo mundo y la entrañable relación con la madre.

Las memorias de Mamá Blanca

Cholera, although it can kill an adult through dehydration in half a day, is easily treated. Yet in 1992-93, some five hundred people died from cholera in the Orinoco Delta of eastern Venezuela. In some communities, a third of the adults died in a single night, as anthropologist Charles Briggs and Clara Mantini-Briggs, a Venezuelan public health physician, reveal in their frontline report. Why, they ask in this moving and thought-provoking account, did so many die near the end of the twentieth century from a bacterial infection associated with the premodern past?

It was evident that the number of deaths resulted not only from inadequacies in medical services but also from the failure of public health officials to inform residents that cholera was likely to arrive. Less evident were the ways that scientists, officials, and politicians connected representations of infectious diseases with images of social inequality. In Venezuela, cholera was racialized as officials used anthropological notions of "culture" in deflecting blame away from their institutions and onto the victims themselves. The disease, the space of the Orinoco Delta, and the "indigenous ethnic group" who suffered cholera all came to seem somehow synonymous.

One of the major threats to people's health worldwide is this deadly cycle of passing the blame. Carefully documenting how stigma, stories, and statistics circulate across borders, this first-rate ethnography demonstrates that the process undermines all the efforts of physicians and public health officials and at the same time contributes catastrophically to epidemics not only of cholera but also of tuberculosis, malaria, AIDS, and other killers. The authors have harnessed their own outrage over what took place during the epidemic and its aftermath in order to make clear the political and human stakes involved in the circulation of narratives, resources, and germs.



Stories in the Time of Cholera: Racial Profiling during a Medical Nightmare

"Venezuelan Anarchism: The History of a Movement" covers Venezuelan anarchism and its partisans from the first appearance of anarchist ideas in the period prior to independence through today. Venezuelan political histories have focused almost exclusively upon the various Venezuelan governments and political parties. "Venezuelan Anarchism" shifts the focus to those opposed to those governments and political parties, those who until now have been nearly forgotten. The book also explains in some detail their ideas, publications, and actions in opposition to Venezuela's ruling political elites and, more recently, Venezuela's authoritarian populists.

Venezuelan Anarchism: The History of a Movement

Among the top ten oil exporters in the world and a founding member of OPEC, Venezuela currently supplies 11 percent of U.S. crude oil imports. But when the country elected the fiery populist politician Hugo Chavez in 1998, tensions rose with this key trading partner and relations have been strained ever since.

In this concise, accessible addition to Oxford's "What Everyone Needs to Know(R) "series, Miguel Tinker Salas -- a native of Venezuela who has written extensively about the country -- takes a broadly chronological approach that focuses especially on oil and its effects on Venezuela's politics, economy, culture, and international relations. After an introductory section that discusses the legacy of Spanish colonialism, Tinker Salas explores the "The Era of the Gusher," a period which began with the discovery of oil in the early twentieth century, encompassed the mid-century development and nationalization of the industry, and ended with a change of government in 1989 in response to widespread protests. The third section provides a detailed discussion of Hugo Chavez-his rise to power, his domestic political and economic policies, and his high-profile forays into international relations-as well as surveying the current landscape of Venezuela in the wake of Chavez's death in March 2013. Arranged in a question-and-answer format that allows readers to search topics of particular interest, the book covers questions such as, who is Simon Bolivar and why is he called the George Washington of Latin America? How did the discovery of oil change Venezuela's relationship to the U.S.? What forces where behind the coups of 1992? And how does Venezuela interact with China, Russia, and Iran?

Informative, engaging, and written by a leading expert on the country, "Venezuela: What Everyone Needs to Know(R) "offers an authoritative guide to an increasingly important player on the world stage.

"What Everyone Needs to Know(R)" is a registered trademark of Oxford University Press.


Venezuela: What Everyone Needs to Know®

A failed revolutionary attempt drives the hero of Hudson's novel to seek refuge in the primeval forests of south-western Venezuela. There, in the 'green mansions' of the title, Abel encounters the wood-nymph Rima, the last survivor of a mysterious aboriginal race. The love that flowers between them is soon overshadowed by cruelty and sorrow... One of the acknowledged masters of natural history writing, W. H. Hudson forms an important link between nineteenth-century Romanticism and the twentieth-century ecological movement.

First published in 1904 and a bestseller after its reissue a dozen years later, "Green Mansions" offers its readers a poignant meditation on the loss of wilderness, the dream of a return to nature, and the bitter reality of the encounter between savage and civilized man.

Green Mansions

Hugo Chavez: The Definitive Biography of Venezuela's Controversial President

Oil has played a major role in Venezuela’s economy since the first gusher was discovered along Lake Maracaibo in 1922. As Miguel Tinker Salas demonstrates, oil has also transformed the country’s social, cultural, and political landscapes. In "The Enduring Legacy", Tinker Salas traces the history of the oil industry’s rise in Venezuela from the beginning of the twentieth century, paying particular attention to the experiences and perceptions of industry employees, both foreign and Venezuelan. He reveals how class ambitions and corporate interests combined to reshape many Venezuelans’ ideas of citizenship. Middle-class Venezuelans embraced the oil industry from the start, anticipating that it would transform the country by introducing modern technology, sparking economic development, and breaking the landed elites’ stranglehold. Eventually Venezuelan employees of the industry found that their benefits, including relatively high salaries, fueled loyalty to the oil companies. That loyalty sometimes trumped allegiance to the nation-state.North American and British petroleum companies, seeking to maintain their stakes in Venezuela, promoted the idea that their interests were synonymous with national development. They set up oil camps—residential communities to house their workers—that brought Venezuelan employees together with workers from the United States and Britain, and eventually with Chinese, West Indian, and Mexican migrants as well. Through the camps, the companies offered not just housing but also schooling, leisure activities, and acculturation into a structured, corporate way of life. Tinker Salas contends that these practices shaped the heart and soul of generations of Venezuelans whom the industry provided with access to a middle-class lifestyle. His interest in how oil suffused the consciousness of Venezuela is personal: Tinker Salas was born and raised in one of its oil camps.

The Enduring Legacy: Oil, Culture, and Society in Venezuela

The Venezuela case: An story to how 21st Century Socialism destroyed a country.

Simon Bolivar freed no fewer than what were to become six countries — a vast domain some 800,000 square miles in extent — from Spanish colonial rule in savage wars against the then-mightiest military machine on earth. The ferocity of his leadership and fighting earned him the grudging nickname "the devil" from his enemies. His astonishing resilience in the face of military defeat and seemingly hopeless odds, as well his equestrian feat of riding tens of thousands of miles across what remains one of the most inhospitable territories on earth, earned him the name "Culo de Hierro" — Iron Ass — among his soldiers. It was one of the most spectacular military campaigns in history, fought against the backdrop of the Andean mountains, through immense flooded savannahs, jungles, and shimmering deserts. Indeed the war itself was medieval — fought under warlords across huge spaces by horsemen with lances, and infantry with knives and machetes (as well as muskets). It was the last warriors' war.

Although the creator of the northern half of Latin America, Bolivar inspired the whole continent and still does today. This is Robert Harvey's astonishing, gripping, and beautifully researched biography of one of South America's most cherished heroes and one of the world's most accomplished military leaders, by any standard.

Bolivar: The Liberator of Latin America

On January 2, 1678, a fleet of French ships sank off the Venezuelan coast. This proved disastrous for French naval power in the region, and sparked the rise of a golden age of piracy.

Tracing the lives of fabled pirates like the Chevalier de Grammont, Nikolaas Van Hoorn, Thomas Paine, and Jean Comte d'Estrées, "The Lost Fleet" portrays a dark age, when the outcasts of European society formed a democracy of buccaneers, settling on a string of islands off the African coast. From there, the pirates haunted the world's oceans, wreaking havoc on the settlements along the Spanish mainland and -- often enlisted by French and English governments -- sacking ships, ports, and coastal towns.

More than three hundred years later, writer, explorer, and deep-sea diver Barry Clifford follows the pirates' destructive wake back to Venezuela. With the help of a lost map, drawn by the captain of the lost French fleet, Clifford locates the site of the disaster and wreckage of the once-mighty armada.

The Lost Fleet: The Discovery of a Sunken Armada from the Golden Age of Piracy

A single-volume history of Latin America. Professor Williamson starts with the pre-Columbian Indian peoples and the slow, often savage process of colonization by which Spaniards and Portuguese came to control territory many times the size of Spain. Indeed, it was not until the age of the Enlightenment, dynastic shifts, imperial reforms and Napoleonic conquests in Europe that the scene was set for independent republics. Our own century has witnessed both the long decline of Argentina and the dynamic corporatism of Mexico, lurches between dictatorship and democracy in Brazil and Chile, and utterly distinct developments in Cuba. All this is summarized and surveyed in this book.

The Penguin History of Latin America

In 1935, after the death of dictator General Juan Vicente Gómez, Venezuela consolidated its position as the world's major oil exporter and began to establish what today is South America's longest-lasting democratic regime. Endowed with the power of state oil wealth, successive presidents appeared as transcendent figures who could magically transform Venezuela into a modern nation. During the 1974-78 oil boom, dazzling development projects promised finally to effect this transformation. Yet now the state must struggle to appease its foreign creditors, counter a declining economy, and contain a discontented citizenry. In critical dialogue with contemporary social theory, Fernando Coronil examines key transformations in Venezuela's polity, culture, and economy, recasting theories of development and highlighting the relevance of these processes for other postcolonial nations. The result is a timely and compelling historical ethnography of political power at the cutting edge of interdisciplinary reflections on modernity and the state. 



The Magical State: Nature, Money, and Modernity in Venezuela

Las Aventuras de Juan Planchard

For decades, the economy of Venezuela has depended on petroleum. As a consequence of a reduction in the price of oil, Venezuela recently experienced an economic downturn resulting in rampant social spending, administrative corruption, and external economic forces that collectively led credit-rating agencies to declare in November 2017 that Venezuela was in default on its debt payments. How did this Latin American nation come to this point?



"The History of Venezuela" explores Venezuela's history from its earliest times to the present day, demonstrating both the richness of Venezuela and its people and the complexity of its political, social, and economic problems. As with all titles in The Greenwood Histories of the Modern Nations series, this chronological narrative examines political, economic, cultural, philosophical, and religious continuities in Venezuela's long and rich history, providing readers with a concise yet up-to-date study of the nation. The volume highlights the country's wide variety of cultures, languages, political ideologies, and historical figures and landmarks through maps, photographs, biographies, a timeline, and a bibliographical essay with suggestions for further reading.

Venezuela

Crude Nation: How Oil Riches Ruined Venezuela

Raúl Gallegos

Bolívar: American Liberator

Marie Arana

In Trouble Again: A Journey Between the Orinoco and the Amazon

Redmond O'Hanlon

Ifigenia

Teresa de la Parra

Comandante: Hugo Chávez's Venezuela

Rory Carroll

Hugo Chavez and the Bolivarian Revolution

Richard Gott

The Sickness Unto Death: A Christian Psychological Exposition for Upbuilding and Awakening

Søren Kierkegaard

Memories of Altagracia

Salvador Garmendia

It Would Be Night in Caracas

Karina Sainz Borgo

Dragons in the Waters (O'Keefe Family, #2)

Madeleine L'Engle

The Silence and the Scorpion: The Coup Against Chavez and the Making of Modern Venezuela

Brian A. Nelson

Building the Commune: Radical Democracy in Venezuela

George Ciccariello-Maher

Three Gringos in Venezuela and Central America

Richard Harding-Davis

Las lanzas coloradas

Arturo Uslar Pietri

Canaima

Rómulo Gallegos

Dragon in the Tropics: Venezuela and the Legacy of Hugo Chavez (Latin America Initiative)

Javier Corrales

Blue Label / Etiqueta Azul

Eduardo Sánchez Rugeles

Barrio Rising: Urban Popular Politics and the Making of Modern Venezuela

Alejandro Velasco

The History of Venezuela

H. Micheal Tarver

Las memorias de Mamá Blanca

Teresa de la Parra

Stories in the Time of Cholera: Racial Profiling during a Medical Nightmare

Charles L. Briggs

Venezuelan Anarchism: The History of a Movement

Rodolfo Montes de Oca

Venezuela: What Everyone Needs to Know®

Miguel Tinker Salas

Green Mansions

William H. Hudson

Hugo Chavez: The Definitive Biography of Venezuela's Controversial President

Cristina Marcano

The Enduring Legacy: Oil, Culture, and Society in Venezuela

Miguel Tinker Salas

The Venezuela case: An story to how 21st Century Socialism destroyed a country.

Fernando German M

Bolivar: The Liberator of Latin America

Robert Harvey

The Lost Fleet: The Discovery of a Sunken Armada from the Golden Age of Piracy

Barry Clifford

The Penguin History of Latin America

Edwin Williamson

The Magical State: Nature, Money, and Modernity in Venezuela

Fernando Coronil

Las Aventuras de Juan Planchard

Jonathan Jakubowicz

The History of Venezuela

H Micheal Tarver