Crude Nation: How Oil Riches Ruined Venezuela

Crude Nation (2016) is a modern cautionary tale that tells the story of how the country with the largest oil reserves in the world ended up in one of the worst crises in recorded history. The book tells the story of how Venezuela became the quintessential oil nation that stumbled through crisis after crisis, created a stable democracy for a while, and then was undone by populism. It captures the everyday lives of Venezuelans as they stand in line to buy rationed food, struggle with hunger and violence, while their leaders wasted the largest oil bounty in a generation.

Crude Nation has been recommended by The New York Times, the Financial Times and The Guardian newspapers, as a must read. It has been praised by CNN’s Fareed Zakaria, Ian Bremmer, and Moises Naim, and was cited in the show Last Week Tonight with John Oliver. Crude Nation was awarded the Christopher J. Welles Memorial Prize by the Columbia Journalism School. Spain’s Grupo Planeta published the Spanish version of book under the title Cuando Se Jodió Venezuela. Buy Crude Nation here.