Blood of Brothers

In 1976, at age twenty-five, Stephen Kinzer arrived in Nicaragua as a freelance journalist—and became a witness to history. He returned many times during the years that followed, becoming Latin America correspondent for the Boston Globe in 1981 and joining the foreign staff of the New York Times in 1983. That year he opened the New York Times Managua bureau, making that newspaper the first daily in America to maintain a full-time office in Nicaragua.Widely considered the best-connected journalist in Central America, Kinzer personally met and interviewed people at every level of the Somoza, Sandinistas and contra hierarchies, as well as dissidents, heads of state, and countless ordinary citizens throughout the region.Blood of Brothers is Kinzer’s dramatic story of the centuries-old power struggle that burst into the headlines in 1979 with the overthrow of the Somoza dictatorship. It is a vibrant portrait of the Nicaraguan people and their volcanic land, a cultural history rich in poetry and bloodshed, baseball and insurrection.

Because he spent as much time in the streets and villages as he did in embassies and restaurants, Kinzer was able to understand and report the many levels of reality generally hidden behind fogs of ideology, public statements and political rhetoric...Blood of Brothers is a must-read for anyone who hopes to understand the continuing need for a more enlightened U.S. foreign policy in Central America., A comprehensive and enthralling account of how the Sandinistas triumphed in the destruction of 'an old and unjust order,' but failed to make over Nicaragua in their own austere and militant image. Stephen Kinzer, an eyewitness to it all, does justice to both triumph and failure in this even-handed and readable book., An example of public journalism at its best, his book will stand as the definitive study of Nicaragua in the turbulent 80s., By the former New York Times Managua bureau chief, this is a well-written, information-rich survey of modern Nicaragua.

Stephen Kinzer is a Senior Fellow at the Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs at Brown University. Merilee Grindle is the Edward S. Mason Professor of International Development, Emerita, at Harvard University and the former director of its David Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies. She served as president of the Latin American Studies Association and has written or contributed to over a dozen scholarly books.