Venezuela is the seventh largest oil producer and holder of the largest proven reserves in the world. It’s also a country full of problems, as evidenced by having the biggest inflation rates and, by some estimates the highest crime rates worldwide. Despite having an oil boom between 2004 through 2008 with income of around two billion dollars, in 2016 it suffered an immense economic contraction and probably the largest supply shortcut crisis in its history. This third edition of Historical Dictionary of Venezuela contains a chronology, an introduction, appendixes, and an extensive bibliography. The dictionary section has over 700 cross-referenced entries on important personalities, politics, economy, foreign relations, religion, and culture. This book is an excellent resource for students, researchers, and anyone wanting to know more about Venezuela.

The preparation of this book has been a joint labor during the spare moments of the two authors, whose time has been occupied with subjects to which pearls are not wholly foreign—one as a gem expert, and the other in the fisheries branch of the American government. For many years the writers have collected data on the subject of pearls, and have accumulated all the obtainable literature, not only the easily procurable books, but likewise manuscripts, copies of rare volumes, original edicts, and legislative enactments, thousands of newspaper clippings, and interesting illustrations, many of them unique, making probably the largest single collection of data in existence on this particular subject. It was deemed advisable to present the results of these studies and observations in one harmonious volume, rather than in two different publications. While the book is a joint work in the sense that each writer has contributed material to all of the chapters and has critically examined and approved the entire work, the senior author has more closely applied himself to the latter half of the text, covering antiquity values, commerce, wearing manipulation, treatment, famous collections, aboriginal use, and the illustrations, while the junior author has attended to the earlier half of the book, with reference to history, origin, sources, fisheries, culture, mystical properties, and the literature of the pearl.