This book consists of 14 interviews conducted with Venezuela’s current president, Hugo Chávez, between his release from prison in March 1994 and June 1998, in the midst of the presidential campaign. The last 70 pages are devoted to issues related to the elections, but the rest of the book deals mostly with two themes: Chávez’s interpretations of Venezuelan history and the abortive February 4, 1992, military coup that he led. Chávez recalls that his interest in history dates from his adolescence, when he avidly researched the life of his great-grandfather, who had participated in a military movement against longtime dictator Juan Vicente Gómez, in order to determine whether the rebel leader was a “guerrilla or an assassin” (p. 58). His investigation did not end with the family’s history, as he took an interest in other military leaders of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Chávez points out that, with the...

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