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Miguel Tinker Salas
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Venezuela: What Everyone Needs to Know® 1st Edition, Kindle Edition

by Miguel Tinker Salas (Author) Format: Kindle Edition
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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® 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 Simón Bolívar 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® offers an authoritative guide to an increasingly important player on the world stage.

What Everyone Needs to Know® is a registered trademark of Oxford University Press.
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  1. ISBN-13
    978-0199783298
  2. Edition
    1st
  3. Sticky notes
    On Kindle Scribe
  4. Publisher
    Oxford University Press
  5. Publication date
    April 2, 2015
  6. Part of series
    What Everyone Needs To Know?
  7. Language
    English
  8. File size
    4411 KB
  9. See all details
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Next 5 for you in this series See full series
Total Price: $38.15

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

WHAT EVERYONE NEEDS TO KNOW About This Series

Who it's for:

Busy people with diverse interests, ranging from college students to professionals, who wish to inform themselves in a succinct yet authoritative manner about a particular topic.

What's inside:

An incisive approach to a complex and timely issue, laid out in a straight-forward, question-and-answer format.

Meet Our Authors

Top experts in their given fields, ranging from an Economist correspondent to a director at the Council on Foreign Relations, you can trust our authors’ expertise and guidance.

Popular Topics in the "What Everyone Needs to Know" Series

  • International Politics
  • Environmental Policies
  • World History
  • Sciences & Math
  • Religion & Spirituality

Review

"In this broad, accessible overview of the country's political history, Salas finds the roots of most, but not all, of today's problems in the rule of Hugo Chavez, who served as Venezuela's president from 1999 until his death in 2013." --Foreign Affairs

"This new entry in Oxford's ongoing series [is] an especially timely and valuable resource...Using a question-and-answer format that aids in scanning and searching, Salas offers an informative overview of his native country's history...Key context on a political hot spot." --Library Journal

"This is not just a reference book; it is an easily accessible history of the country of Venezuela. Formatted into questions and answers, Salas has written a fair-minded text for the reader interested in knowing more about the country's history and politics or the researcher looking for an up-to-date reference work. Every popular movement, every coup, and every major economic influence important to the nation of Venezuela is discussed here." --Counterpunch

"Tinker Salas brings to life the political, economic, and social foundations of the three political regimes that organized Venezuelan political life between 1948 and 2015." -- David J. Myers, Latin American Research Review

Product details

  • ASIN ‏ : ‎ B00SNHHKDW
  • Publisher ‏ : ‎ Oxford University Press; 1st edition (April 2, 2015)
  • Publication date ‏ : ‎ April 2, 2015
  • Language ‏ : ‎ English
  • File size ‏ : ‎ 4411 KB
  • Text-to-Speech ‏ : ‎ Enabled
  • Screen Reader ‏ : ‎ Supported
  • Enhanced typesetting ‏ : ‎ Enabled
  • X-Ray ‏ : ‎ Not Enabled
  • Word Wise ‏ : ‎ Enabled
  • Sticky notes ‏ : ‎ On Kindle Scribe
  • Print length ‏ : ‎ 241 pages
  • Customer Reviews:

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Miguel Tinker Salas

Miguel Tinker Salas

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Customer reviews

3.9 out of 5 stars
56 global ratings

Top reviews from the United States

Ramin
5.0 out of 5 stars Superb and balanced introduction
Reviewed in the United States on March 17, 2016
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This work in a mere 240 pages offered a surprisingly balanced and complete introduction to the essential modern history and political, economic, and social dynamics of Venezuela. In addition, very well written and engaging. If you want a non-ideological, serious, but enjoyable to read introduction to this important country, strongly recommend Salas' excellent work.
4 people found this helpful
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4.0 out of 5 stars This book in great until you learn that it is written with a ...
Reviewed in the United States on May 23, 2017
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This book in great until you learn that it is written with a heavy pro-chavista bias. Anyway a great source of information if you can "clean" the presented information. It doesn't shy away from reporting unfavourable events, so that is why I am giving 4 /5.
4 people found this helpful
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La Cabaña
2.0 out of 5 stars Partial and Biased History of Venezuela
Reviewed in the United States on October 9, 2018
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This book was published in 2015. It is recent enough to have covered the collapse of major Venezuelan social programs such as _Barrio Adentro_.

But... it doesn't.

Instead, anyone reading pages 193-196 of this book would be misled to believe that _Barrio Adentro_ still functions as a broad-ranging system of community clinics and medical centers.

Not anymore.

_Barrio Adentro_, along with the more traditional Venezuelan medical system, has collapsed. That collapse was underway even before Hugo Chávez died in 2013, two years before this book was written.

Although the author discusses the Venezuelan oil industry, he does not discuss the "resource curse" that overdependency on one sole export causes.

Michael Tinker Salas gives a fairly detailed coverage of Venezuelan history from the days of Simón Bolívar through the presidency of Carlos Andrés Pérez. He sufficiently covers the infrastructure-building but dictatorial Marcos Pérez Jiménez, but glosses over the presidency of Rómulo Betancourt, who was an interesting figure who started out as a passionate communist student, but later became a Kennedy-type liberal under whom the country prospered, despite an insurgency and growing crime.

Although Michael Tinker Salas's coverage of the years from 1992 onward is not overtly _chavista_, it is too favorable to the regime that has now destroyed Venezuela.

The perspective in the book is more suitable for left-leaning outlets such as Pathfinder Press, Pluto Books, or Verso Books than it is for Oxford University Press.
10 people found this helpful
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philo2017
4.0 out of 5 stars good book for history but I was looking for more ...
Reviewed in the United States on May 24, 2017
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good book for history but I was looking for more detail for the present periods
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John McGrath
1.0 out of 5 stars This is written from the Chavista point of view. ...
Reviewed in the United States on June 15, 2016
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This is written from the Chavista point of view. That would be acceptable if the author said that was what he was presenting, but instead, he pretends that he is offering objective facts. As such, this book is little more than Chavista propaganda.
11 people found this helpful
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Charlene Holder
5.0 out of 5 stars Venezuela
Reviewed in the United States on March 2, 2019
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This was a gift
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Enrico Pilatzo
5.0 out of 5 stars Great learning tool on Venezuela
Reviewed in the United States on April 16, 2015
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Don't hate without first reading this book. A fresh prospective on Venezuela.
3 people found this helpful
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Manuel Herrera
5.0 out of 5 stars Five Stars
Reviewed in the United States on July 22, 2015
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Although not at well referenced, it is surprisingly accurate.
4 people found this helpful
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Top reviews from other countries

GR
2.0 out of 5 stars For everything else than politics, useful and lively account
Reviewed in Canada on June 15, 2020
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For everything else than politics, useful and lively account of the history of Venezuela, with interesting discussion of culture, folklore, baseball, telenovelas, and the likes. The historical part has many holes, inevitably, but it is a good summary. The moment the author talks about politics under Chávez, the book suddenly veers toward pro-Chávez propaganda. The book relentlessly demonizes the "conservative" opposition (in fact it ranges from right to centre-left), as Chávez did, elides electoral irregularities, downplays economic mismanagement, and openly justifies repression of demonstrators. Then, he concludes "the absence of a democratic opposition creates problems for the country." Now you have it: only Chávez and Maduro are democrat! In the "Everything you need to know" collection, such heavy bias is a bit surprising.
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Theresa d. V.
1.0 out of 5 stars 100% palabras de un Chavizta
Reviewed in Germany on May 8, 2017
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I'm shocked Oxford Press would actually publish a piece like this. It hurts physically to read the lies written down.
One person found this helpful
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Christopher Moar
5.0 out of 5 stars Phenomenal and enlightening
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on April 22, 2015
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I liked how detailed this was; helped massively with my 3,000 word essay on baseball in Venezuela and the sociopolitical surroundings
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