Hugo Chávez and the Bolivarian Revolution With photographs by Georges Bartoli

The only up-to-date book on the democratically elected president of Venezuela, and the US-assisted attemptâ??and failureâ??to depose him.

The only first-hand report on contemporary Venezuela, Hugo Chávez, by veteran correspondent Richard Gott, places the countryâ??s controversial and charismatic president in historical perspective, and examines his plans and programs. This new edition has a chapter on the attempted and failed military coup, Venezuelaâ??s recent recall election, and discusses US covert intervention against this democratically elected public official.

The spectre of Simon Bolívar hovers once again over Latin America as the aims and ambitions of the Liberator are taken up by Comandante Hugo Chávez. Welcomed by the inhabitants of the teeming shanty towns of Caracas as their potential savior, and greeted by Washington with considerable alarm, this former golpista-turned-democrat has already begun the most wide-ranging transformation of oil-rich Venezuela for half a century, and dramatically affected the political debate throughout Latin America.

â??Gott is always an interesting, well-informed, and engaging writer.â?? â?? Foreign Affairs

â??Gott is, if nothing else, a true believer of the revolutionary process in Latin America and brings his own sense of moral indignation every time he mentions the United States. It is worth reading a text that is so ideological yet effectively explains how many people in the upper ranks of the Chávez government perceive the world around them.â?? â?? Center for Strategic and International Studies

â??A colourful and readable account of Chávezâ??s background and beliefs.â?? â?? Financial Times

â??Chávez, as Richard Gottâ??s readable profile makes clear, is no ordinary caudillo.â?? â?? Times Higher Education Supplement

Richard Gott is a former Latin America correspondent and features editor for the Guardian. A specialist in Latin American affairs, he worked in the 1960s at the University of Chile, where he wrote Guerrilla Movements in Latin America, the definitive study of the revolutionary groups that arose in the years after the Cuban revolution. He is also the author of The Appeasers (with Martin Gilbert) and Land Without Evil. Publication