Venezuela's history is a pageant in which have passed some of the world's most fascinating figures: Christopher Columbus, who mistook Venezuela for the Garden of Eden; Sir Walter Raleigh, whose death warrant was signed on the banks of the Orinoco; Henry Morgan, who made his exciting escape from Lake Maracaibo by firing the Spanish fleet ; Simon Bolivar, who liberated a continent; Antonio Guzman Blanco, history's most spectacular swindler. Most extraordinary of all, perhaps, was Francisco de Miranda, a conceit of Venezuelan culture, who became an habitue of Europe's courts and bordellos. Friend of Alexander Hamilton, intimate of Catherine the Great, a general of the French Revolution, and a conspirator in the pay of William Pitt, Miranda was determined to free his country, singlehanded if need be. In 1806, despite the warnings of President Thomas Jefferson and Secretary of State James Madison, he recruited an army of young Americans in New York for an invasion of Venezuela. The attack failed. Fifty of the Americans rotted in Spanish dungeons. Ten were executed, their bloody heads displayed on spikes. In death, they became some of the first martyrs to Latin American independence. Today Venezuela is in the full tide of economic development. She is a new country, like our own; and she is also a melting pot. African Negroes and American Indians, together with European whites, have contributed their bodies, superstitions, languages, and temperaments to form a distinct cultural pattern completely different from any of the civilizations that produced it. Venezuela is a prince-or-pauper country -- a country of incalculable potential. What happens to that potential is a matter of intense concern to every American. While oil from Maracaibo and iron ore from the Gran Sabana feed United States refineries and steel mills, Venezuela is vital to hemispheric defense. In this book, the first history of Venezuela in English, the reader will find a colorful and enlightening study of a nation in the making. - Jacket flap.