Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez recently presented US President Barack Obama with a copy of Eduardo Galeano‘s Open Veins of Latin America, prompting an enormous surge in interest in the 1971 work.  He even inscribed it: “To Obama, with affection.” – now how’s that for a very cool association copy?

Reportedly the publisher is scrambling to print more copies as new book retailers are quickling selling out, but you can still pick up Eduardo Galeano’s Open Veins of Latin America at Biblio. (Habla usted español?  Tenemos unas copias en español, también:  Las Venas Abiertas de America Latina.)

Obama has become quite the Oprah of late, with his reading list bringing classics such as Toni Morrison’s Song of Solomon, Moral Man and Immoral Society by Rheinhold Niebuhr, and For Whom the Bell Tolls racing to the top of the sales charts.  Not to forget, there’s also his very own bestselling biography, Dreams of My Father which has been a perennial top seller on Biblio and elsewhere since his debut at the Democratic convention a few years ago.