A Guide to the Birds of Panama
by Robert S. Ridgely
from Princeton University Press
This is the first paperback version of the second edition of the popular A Guide to the Birds of Panama. In the second edition, published in 1989, the authors expanded information on the birds of Costa Rica, Nicaragua, and Honduras: approximately 200 new species were added to the material in the 1976 edition. Over 300 additional species, some of them Panamanian, were illustrated. Sixteen new plates were added, and three of the original plates were replaced by improved versions. Throughout the book changes were made to accommodate the explosion in knowledge of the birds of Panama and nearby areas and of neotropical birds in general. The basic sequence and systematics of the AOU 1983 Check-list were adopted. Also included in the revised edition was expanded and updated information on birdfinding in Panama, prepared with the assistance of two of Panama's best resident birders. The book also contains a special section outlining developments in Panama ornithology and conservation. "A sophisticated treatment of one of the world's richest avifaunas."--The Quarterly Review of Biology
Blood of Brothers: Life and War in Nicaragua (David Rockefeller Center Series on Latin American Studies)
by Stephen Kinzer
from David Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies
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 openedthe 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.
El pais bajo mi piel
by Gioconda Belli
from Vintage
Tras casarse muy jóven y ser madre, Gioconda Belli se unió al clandestino y emergente movimiento Sandinista, sustituyendo su deseo de ser una buena esposa por la necesidad de vivir una vida plena y comprometida con los cambios sociales en su paÃs. Irónicamente, su pertenencia a la burguesÃa y su carrera como poeta renombrada, le brindaron la fachada que le permitió funcionar, secretamente, como rebelde. Desde su infancia en Managua y sus encuentros iniciales con poetas y revolucionarios, a persecuciones urbanas, reuniones con Fidel Castro, relaciones amorosas truncadas por la muerte o el exilio en México y Costa Rica, hasta su inesperado matrimonio con un periodista norteamericano, la historia de Gioconda Belli es tanto la de una mujer que se descubre a sà misma, como la de una nación que forja su destino.
Nicaragua, 4th Edition
by Thomas W Walker
from Westview Press
Sandinista: Carlos Fonseca and the Nicaraguan Revolution
by Matilde Zimmermann
from Duke University Press
“A must-read for anyone interested in Nicaragua—or in the overall issue of social change.”—Margaret Randall, author of SANDINO'S DAUGHTERS and SANDINO'S DAUGHTERS REVISITED
Sandinista is the first English-language biography of Carlos Fonseca Amador, the legendary leader of the Sandinista National Liberation Front of Nicaragua (the FSLN) and the most important and influential figure of the post–1959 revolutionary generation in Latin America. Fonseca, killed in battle in 1976, was the undisputed intellectual and strategic leader of the FSLN. In a groundbreaking and fast-paced narrative that draws on a rich archive of previously unpublished Fonseca writings, Matilde Zimmermann sheds new light on central themes in his ideology as well as on internal disputes, ideological shifts, and personalities of the FSLN.
The first researcher ever to be allowed access to Fonseca’s unpublished writings (collected by the Institute for the Study of Sandinism in the early 1980s and now in the hands of the Nicaraguan Army), Zimmermann also obtained personal interviews with Fonseca’s friends, family members, fellow combatants, and political enemies. Unlike previous scholars, Zimmermann sees the Cuban revolution as the crucial turning point in Fonseca’s political evolution. Furthermore, while others have argued that he rejected Marxism in favor of a more pragmatic nationalism, Zimmermann shows how Fonseca’s political writings remained committed to both socialist revolution and national liberation from U.S. imperialism and followed the ideas of both Che Guevara and the earlier Nicaraguan leader Augusto César Sandino. She further argues that his philosophy embracing the experiences of the nation’s workers and peasants was central to the FSLN’s initial platform and charismatic appeal.
Life is Hard: Machismo, Danger, and the Intimacy of Power in Nicaragua (Centennial Book)
by Roger N. Lancaster
from University of California Press
"Rambo took the barrios by storm: Spanish videotapes of the movie were widely available, and nearly all the boys and young men had seen it, usually on the VCRs of their family's more affluent friends. . . . As one young Sandinista commented, 'Rambo is like the Nicaraguan soldier. He's a superman. And if the United States invades, we'll cut the marines down like Rambo did.' And then he mimicked Rambo's famous war howl and mimed his arc of machine gun fire. We both laughed."--from the book
There is a Nicaragua that Americans have rarely seen or heard about, a nation of jarring political paradoxes and staggering social and cultural flux. In this Nicaragua, the culture of machismo still governs most relationships, insidious racism belies official declarations of ethnic harmony, sexual relationships between men differ starkly from American conceptions of homosexuality, and fascination with all things American is rampant. Roger Lancaster reveals the enduring character of Nicaraguan society as he records the experiences of three families and their community through times of war, hyperinflation, dire shortages, and political turmoil.
Life is hard for the inhabitants of working class barrios like Doña Flora, who expects little from men and who has reared her four children with the help of a constant female companion; and life is hard for Miguel, undersized and vulnerable, stigmatized as a cochón--a "faggot"--until he learned to fight back against his brutalizers.
Through candid discussions with young and old Nicaraguans, men and women, Lancaster constructs an account of the successes and failures of the 1979 Sandinista Revolution, documenting the effects of war and embargo on the cultural and economic fabric of Nicaraguan society. He tracks the break up of families, surveys informal networks that allow female-headed households to survive, explores the gradual transformation of the culture of machismo, and reveals a world where heroic efforts have been stymied and the best hopes deferred. This vast chronicle is sustained by a rich theoretical interpretation of the meanings of ideology, power, and the family in a revolutionary setting.
Played out against a backdrop of political travail and social dislocation, this work is a story of survival and resistance but also of humor and happiness. Roger Lancaster shows us that life is hard, but then too, life goes on.
Firewall: The Iran-Contra Conspiracy and Cover-Up
by Lawrence E. Walsh
from W. W. Norton & Company
In its chilling and unsparing revelations, Firewall is the definitive account of the most dangerous breach of presidential authority since Watergate. With Ronald Reagan's knowledge and support, the United States attempted to trade arms for hostages held by Iranian terrorists; some of the secret money then funded the guerrilla activities of the Nicaraguan Contras, a counter-revolutionary group that Congress had specifically forbidden the administration to support. In this historic, first-person account, the independent counsel in the Iran-Contra investigation exposes the extraordinary duplicity of the highest officials of the Reagan administration and the paralyzing effects of the cover-up.
The Jaguar Smile: A Nicaraguan Journey
by Salman Rushdie
from Picador
Rushdie went to Nicaragua in 1986, harboring no preconceptions of what he might find. What he discovered was overwhelming: a culture of heroes who had turned into inanimate objects and of politicians and warriors who were poets; a land of difficult, often beautiful contradictions. His perceptions always heightened by his special sensitivity to “the views from underneath,” Rushdie reveals a land resounding with the clashes between history and morality, government and individuals.
Our Own Backyard: The United States In Central America, 1977-1992
by William M. LeoGrande
from The University of North Carolina Press
"What began as a relatively bounded project examining the domestic debate over Central America evolved into a comprehensive history of U.S. policy toward the region during its decade of crisis--how policy was made, how it worked, and how the administration tried to sell it to the American people."
According to William LeoGrande, American involvement in Central America in the 1970s and '80s can be understood only in the context of the Cold War, and its greater struggle against the Soviet Union. Central America--and by this William LeoGrande means mainly El Salvador and Nicaragua--was simply one of several stages upon which these political war games were played. This was especially true during the Reagan years, during which U.S. policy "shifted from Carter's attempts to seek a negotiated settlement in El Salvador, and coexistence with the Sandinista government in Nicaragua, to Reagan's effort to achieve military victory for the Salvadoran government, and the ouster of the Sandinistas by covert proxy war."
In Our Own Backyard, LeoGrande traces the evolution of American policy in Central America as well as its reception by the Congress and people of the United States. He discusses the schisms within Reagan's own ranks, the struggle between the Republican White House and the Democratic congress, and how the ever-present shadow of Vietnam continued to shape American attitudes well into the 1990s. This is a book that liberals will love and conservatives will find plenty to disagree with.
In this remarkable and engaging book, William LeoGrande offers the first comprehensive history of U.S. foreign policy toward Central America in the waning years of the Cold War. From the overthrow of the Somoza dynasty in Nicaragua and the outbreak of El Salvador's civil war in the late 1970s to the final regional peace settlements negotiated a decade later, he chronicles the dramatic struggles—in Washington and Central America—that shaped the region's destiny.
For good or ill, LeoGrande argues, Central America's fate hinged on decisions that were subject to intense struggles among, and within, Congress, the CIA, the Pentagon, the State Department, and the White House—decisions over which Central Americans themselves had little influence. Like the domestic turmoil unleashed by Vietnam, he says, the struggle over Central America was so divisive that it damaged the fabric of democratic politics at home. It inflamed the tug-of-war between Congress and the executive branch over control of foreign policy and ultimately led to the Iran-contra affair, the nation's most serious political crisis since Watergate.
The Country Under My Skin: A Memoir of Love and War
by Gioconda Belli
from Knopf
An electrifying memoir from the acclaimed Nicaraguan writer (“A wonderfully free and original talent”—Harold Pinter) and central figure in the Sandinista Revolution.
Until her early twenties, Gioconda Belli inhabited an upper-class cocoon: sheltered from the poverty in Managua in a world of country clubs and debutante balls; educated abroad; early marriage and motherhood. But in 1970, everything changed. Her growing dissatisfaction with domestic life, and a blossoming awareness of the social inequities in Nicaragua, led her to join the Sandinistas, then a burgeoning but still hidden organization. She would be involved with them over the next twenty years at the highest, and often most dangerous, levels.
Her memoir is both a revelatory insider’s account of the Revolution and a vivid, intensely felt story about coming of age under extraordinary circumstances. Belli writes with both striking lyricism and candor about her personal and political lives: about her family, her children, the men in her life; about her poetry; about the dichotomies between her birth-right and the life she chose for herself; about the failures and triumphs of the Revolution; about her current life, divided between California (with her American husband and their children) and Nicaragua; and about her sustained and sustaining passion for her country and its people.
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