On Friday, the Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez presented Barack Obama with a gift: a copy of the book, Open Veins of Latin America: Five Centuries of the Pillage of a Continent, by Eduardo Galeano. The book, as the subtitle suggests, explores the ways that the developed West has, for the last five centuries, profited off the exploitation of South America's resources and people.According to BBC News, when Mr. Chavez presented the gift to Obama just three days ago, the book sat at number 54,295 on Amazon.com's sales chart. It has since risen to number two.The same thing happened three years ago when Mr. Chavez plugged Noam Chomsky's Hegemony or Survival: America's Quest for Global Dominance during a speech at the United Nations.To be fair, it isn't clear that every writer would benefit from one of Chavez's endorsements. However, if you're the soon-to-be-published author of a scathing critique of American consumer capitalism, you might consider speaking to your agent about sending the galleys to Venezuela. I'm just saying.Photo from Flickr user Daniel Zanini H., licensed under Creative Commons.
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