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Hugo Chavez: Book publicist

12:19 H | Topics: Books - Controversia - Politics - Venezuela

While American media is still reeling over Hugo Chavez's declaration before the U.N. that George W. Bush is "the devil", and the rest of the world struggles with the question of which camp to put the Venezuelan president in -- hero or loco -- celebrated author Noam Chomsky is sitting pretty. He has Chavez to thank for a recent spike in sales of his 2003 book, Hegemony or Survival: America's Quest for Global Dominance, as the leader plugged it during his appearance at the U.N., calling the work "an excellent book to help us understand what has been happening in the world throughout the 20th century ... and the greatest threat looming over our planet."

According to AFP:

News reports said the book, published in 2003, leapt from 26,000 to number one following Chavez's headline-making speech in which he railed against US "imperialism," saying "the hegemonic pretensions of the American empire are placing at risk the very survival of the human species.

And according to Reuters:

By Thursday, the book had risen from backlist obscurity to be the No. 3 bestseller on Amazon.com. Before the speech, the 2004 book reprinted by Owl Books was being outsold by thousands of other titles on the online bookseller's Web site.

According to AFP, Chomsky himself said he would be "happy to meet" Chavez and that he finds many of his views "quite constructive".

Via / Yahoo! News and Reuters

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