Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez could become the Oprah Winfrey of political nonfiction, sending “Open Veins of Latin America: Five Centuries of the Pillage of a Continent” rocketing up Amazon’s bestseller list–from #54,000 to #2 in a single weekend.

During a meeting on Saturday, Chavez handed President Barack Obama a copy of Eduardo Galeano‘s study of colonization and American influence in Latin America. Cable television pundits debated the gesture all weekend, lavishing unexpected attention on the book.

Here’s more from ABC News: “The book, first published in Spanish in 1971, offers a critique of the consequences of 500 years of European and U.S. colonization of Latin America … Banned in Uruguay and Chile when it was first published, ‘Open Veins of Latin America’ is considered a classic in Latin America.”