Chávez Boosts Chomsky Sales

If he ever tires of running Venezuela, Hugo Chávez would make an outstanding book club president, judging by his impact on Noam Chomsky's book sales.

Since waving a copy during an address to the UN last week, the Venezuelan president has made Hegemony or Survival: America's Quest for Global Dominance a publishing sensation.

What was one of Professor Chomsky's lesser known works has surged to No 1 on Amazon's bestseller list, with bookshops making bulk orders from the thousands of extra copies being printed.

The Massachusetts-based commentator's 301-page critique of US foreign policy, first published in 2003, is an at times dense, heavily footnoted broadside against the Bush White House as well as previous administrations.

Mr Chávez lauded the insights of the copy he held aloft from the UN general assembly podium in New York. "I think that the first people who should read this book are our brothers and sisters in the United States, because their threat is right in their own house," he said.

Sales at Barnes & Noble and other retail chains reportedly jumped tenfold, prompting the publisher, Metropolitan Books, a unit of Henry Holt & Company, to print an additional 25,000 copies.

Some of Prof Chomsky's other titles, such as Media Control: The Spectacular Achievements of Propaganda, have also enjoyed a boom in sales.

Until now the dream endorsement for most authors came from television chatshow hosts such as Oprah Winfrey or the UK's Richard and Judy.

Mr Chávez expressed delight at his marketing coup. "Now it's among the world's bestsellers. It's sold out," he said. The president hoped the author would visit Venezuela, where oil wealth is funding what the government describes as a socialist revolution.

It was belated recognition that his literary hero was alive. Last week the former paratrooper lamented not meeting Prof Chomsky before he died. The 77-year-old has retired from teaching linguistics full-time at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He told the New York Times that he would be happy to meet the Venezuelan leader.

Mr Chávez, who blames the US for backing a coup which briefly ousted him in 2002, used his UN address to brand George Bush a "devil" who had left a whiff of sulphur lingering in the chamber. Later he told an audience, to laughter, that his favourite tome was tainted by being placed on the podium where the US leader had stood. "I had to sprinkle it with holy water."