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.

Stephen Kinzer is cultural correspondent for The New York Times.

Merilee S. Grindle is Edward S. Mason Professor of International Development at the John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University and Director of the David Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies.

Other HUP Books by Stephen Kinzer

• Bitter Fruit: The Story of the American Coup in Guatemala, Revised and Expanded

Other HUP Books by Merilee S. Grindle

• Getting Good Government: Capacity Building in the Public Sectors of Developing Countries
• Globalization and the Rural Environment
• Proclaiming Revolution: Bolivia in Comparative Perspective