Paradox of Plenty

Offering a sweeping social history of food and eating in America, Harvey Levenstein explores the economic, political, and cultural factors that have shaped the American diet from 1930 to the present…

The Democratic Republic of Congo has the natural resources the world needs – it is crucial to satisfying our craving for the latest high-tech gadgets; the Inga Dam could light up all of Africa; while Congo's farmers could feed a billion people.

That natural resources can be a curse as well as a blessing is almost a truism in political analysis. In many late-developing countries, the "resource curse" theory predicts, the exploitation of valuable resources will not result in stable, prosperous states but rather in their opposite. Petroleum deposits, for example, may generate so much income that rulers will have little need to establish efficient, tax-extracting bureaucracies, leading to shallow, poorly functioning administrations that remain at the mercy of the world market for oil. Alternatively, resources may be geographically concentrated, thereby intensifying regional, ethnic, or other divisive tensions.

Since he was first elected in 1999, Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez Frias has reshaped a frail but nonetheless pluralistic democracy into a semi-authoritarian regime-an outcome achieved with spectacularly high oil income and widespread electoral support. This eye-opening book illuminates one of the most sweeping and unexpected political transformations in contemporary Latin America.