Hugo

Bart Jones knows Venezuela intimately and was an eyewitness to President Hugo Chavez's rise to power. In "Hugo!" he tells the story of Chavez's impoverished childhood, his military career and the decade of clandestine political activity that ended in a failed attempt to seize power in 1992. He describes the election campaign against a former Miss Universe that finally won Chavez the Presidency and the dramatic reversals of fortune that have marked it: the struggle to reform the Venezuelan economy, the coup attempt of 2002 in which he was kidnapped and faced summary execution, and the oil industry strike that followed. The full stories of many of these episodes have never been told before - in English or Spanish. "Hugo!" is scrupulously researched and sourced, and as compelling to read as a good novel. The ruling elites and popular media in Venezuela and the United States oversimplify by casting Chavez as the heir to Fidel Castro, and more often than not, they have their facts wrong. The truth is more complex, and more interesting.