The Chavez bump strikes again

Comedian Stephen Colbert likes to brag about his ability to boost the book sales and political careers of his guests — the scientifically-proven Colbert bump — but he’s got nothing on Hugo Chávez. After the Venezuelan president gave a copy of the book Open Veins of Latin America: Five Centuries of the Pillage of a ...

By , a former associate editor at Foreign Policy.
586614_090420_galeano2.jpg
586614_090420_galeano2.jpg

Comedian Stephen Colbert likes to brag about his ability to boost the book sales and political careers of his guests -- the scientifically-proven Colbert bump -- but he's got nothing on Hugo Chávez.

Comedian Stephen Colbert likes to brag about his ability to boost the book sales and political careers of his guests — the scientifically-proven Colbert bump — but he’s got nothing on Hugo Chávez.

After the Venezuelan president gave a copy of the book Open Veins of Latin America: Five Centuries of the Pillage of a Continent to Barack Obama at the Summit of the Americas, the book’s sales have skyrocketed:

In just hours, the book, by Uruguayan writer Eduardo Galeano, rocketed to bestseller status on online book store Amazon.com.

The English version was at No. 11 on the site’s list of top sellers Saturday night. On Friday, it had been No. 60,280.

The book topped Amazon’s “Movers and Shakers” list on Saturday — with a reported 466,378-percent increase in popularity on the site.

Back in 2006, Chávez pushed Noam Chomsky’s “Hegemony or Survival” to the top of bestseller lists after praising it in an address to the United Nations.

Can it be long before authors are clamoring to appear on Alo Presidente?

Joshua Keating was an associate editor at Foreign Policy. Twitter: @joshuakeating

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