Hugo!

Hugo!is a work of narrative nonfiction for the general reader by an American journalist who knows the country intimately and who witnessed Chávez’s rise to power. This up-to-the-minute political biography provides extensive new information about Chávez and the modern history of a country that is one of the world’s top producers of both oil and beauty queens. In dramatic fashion Hugo! gives full accounts of Chávez’s impoverished childhood, his years in the West Point...
More Description

Hugo!is a work of narrative nonfiction for the general reader by an American journalist who knows the country intimately and who witnessed Chávez’s rise to power. This up-to-the-minute political biography provides extensive new information about Chávez and the modern history of a country that is one of the world’s top producers of both oil and beauty queens. In dramatic fashion Hugo! gives full accounts of Chávez’s impoverished childhood, his years in the West Point of Venezuela, the discovery of his guiding light, Simon Bolivar, his secret, decade-long conspiracy in the military, the 1989 massacre that shocked the nation and propelled his movement into action, the 1992 coup that lifted him from obscurity to fame, his two years in prison, his road to the presidency as he fought off the challenge of a former Miss Universe, the 2002 coup in which he was kidnapped and nearly killed, and a strike a few months later that shut down the oil industry and nearly strangled the economy. The full stories of many of these episodes have never been told before – in English or Spanish. Based in part on interviews with key people in Chávez’s conspiracy and his presidency, the book gets at “Who is Hugo Chávez?” and “What is Venezuela?” unlike any previous work. This balanced account will enable readers to understand the controversial man behind the famous September 2006 UN speech in which Chávez called George Bush “the devil.”