He is one of the most controversial and important world leaders currently in power. In this international bestseller, Hugo Chávez is captured in a critically acclaimed biography, a riveting account of the Venezuelan president who continues to influence, fascinate, and antagonize America.Born in a small town on the Venezuelan plains, Chávez found his interests radically altered when he entered the military academy in Caracas. There, as Hugo Chávez reveals in dramatic detail, he was drawn to leftist politics and a new sense of himself as predestined to change the fortunes of his country and Latin America as a whole. Portrayed as never before is the double life Chávez soon began to lead: by day he was a family man and a military officer, but by night he secretly recruited insurgents for a violent overthrow of the government. His efforts would climax in an attempted coup against President Carlos Andrés Pérez, an action that ended in a spectacular failure but gave Chávez his first irresistible taste of celebrity and laid the groundwork for his ascension to the presidency eight years later.

Here is the truth about Chávez’s revolutionary “Bolivarian” government, which stresses economic reforms meant to discourage corruption and empower the poor–while the leader spends seven thousand dollars a day on himself and cozies up to Arab oil elites. Venezuelan journalists Cristina Marcano and Alberto Barrera Tyszka explore the often crude and comical public figure who condemns George W. Bush in the most fiery language but at the same time hires lobbyists to improve his country’s image in the West. The authors examine not only Chávez’s political career but also his personal life–including his first marriage, which was marked by a long affair and the birth of a troubled son, and his second marriage, which produced a daughter toward whom Chávez’s favoritism has caused private tension and public talk. This seminal biography is filled with exclusive excerpts from Chávez’s own diary and draws on new research and interviews with such insightful subjects as Herma Marksman, the professor who was his mistress for nine years. Hugo Chávez is an essential work about a man whose power, peculiarities, and passion for the global spotlight only continue to grow.

Hugo Chávez: Sin uniforme es la primera biografía profesional sobre uno de los más polémicos estadistas de América Latina, Hugo Chávez Frías. El libro logra mantenerse a distancia, con una mirada objetiva, frente a la realidad polarizada que vive hoy Venezuela.

Como bien apunta el escritor y periodista argentino Tomás Eloy Martínez, “los documentos que aportan Marcano y Barrera son abundantes e inesperados: desde centenares de entrevistas, incluyendo una, crucial, a Herma Marksman, la profesora de historia que fue amante de Chávez durante los nueve años previos a su ascenso al poder, hasta un cuadro de índices sociales, una bibliografía exhaustiva y fragmentos del diario íntimo que Chávez llevó hasta hace menos de una década’’.

El diario español ABC, en la pluma de Eduardo Posada Carbo, señala: “Lejos de subestimarlo, la biografía de Marcano y Barrera -en una narrativa cautivante, basada en ricos y diversos testimonios, y con un juicio que sin ser neutral sabe guardar distancias-, ofrece el retrato de un político sagaz y perseverante, vanidoso cultivador de su popularidad, ambicioso, capaz de convertir los momentos adversos en oportunidades favorables. ¿Demócrata? A sus seguidores, les ha dicho que la oposición no volverá al gobierno «ni por las malas ni por las buenas». A Bush, Chávez le ha lanzado una apuesta, «a ver quién dura más, si él en la Casa Blanca o yo aquí en Miraflores». Mayores incógnitas surgen de la dirección de su proyecto político que, por encima de cualquier posible ambigüedad, se distingue -como concluyen Marcano y Barrera-, por sus deseos de poder y más poder’’.