Somoza and the Legacy of U.S. Involvement in Central America

somozaThis engaging story of Nicaragua’s notorious tyrant is more than a biography. Solidly written for a general as well as scholarly audience, it paints a portrait of the man against a backdrop of Nicaragua’s political structure, social circumstance, and economic background, encompassing its relations with other Central American countries and the ramifications of the civil war of 1978-79.


Bernard Diederich covered Mexico, Central America, and the Caribbean as a correspondent for Time magazine. He is the author of 1959: The Year That Inflamed the Caribbean, Papa Doc and the Tontons Macoutes, The Price of Blood and its companion volume Murderers Among Us, Trujillo: The Death of the Dictator, and Bon Papa: Haiti’s Golden Years (all available from Markus Wiener).