Excerpt:
"While Monthly Review Press must sell books to remain in operation, our main purpose has always been to promote radical thought and action. And not just in the United States but in all the world. We have published books in which authors have expressed the deepest admiration for Hugo Chávez, but praise for a radical leader is never our goal; it is the empowerment of the masses of workers and peasants we want to help achieve. And yet, it must be said that our love for Chávez has been amply repaid.
On Saturday, April 2009, at the Summit of the Americas meeting in Trinidad, Chávez arose from his seat, walked over to where Barack Obama was seated and handed him a copy of Eduardo Galeano’s classic work of the centuries-long exploitation of Latin America by the great imperialist nations, including, of course, the United States—Open Veins of Latin America. He inscribed the book, “For Obama, with affection.” As word of this spread around the world, sales of the book, the English edition of which we published, skyrocketed, reaching Number 2 on Amazon’s sales charts. This was a great boon to Monthly Review Press and to our distributor, NYU Press. We were inundated with emails and phone calls, and I remember having to quickly re-read the book (which I had used in my classes when I was a teacher), so that I could write and deliver, within one day, a review to an Australian magazine."