"A welcome book on this understudied region and its peoples. Long sections are each given over to the earlier history, post-WWII development, and to an extended and deep narrative-cum-analysis of the region's ethnic-based tensions with the FSLN. A flexible Marxian political-economic view can be embraced or ignored; it is rich when read either way, including a wry coda on the 'unequal development of socialist revolutions' (i.e., not capitalism)"--Handbook of Latin American Studies, v. 57.