This is the best analysis we yet possess of the fall of the Somoza regime and the rise of the Sandinistas. The author, a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and foreign affairs writer for The New York Times, has firsthand experience and an unusually good insight into Nicaraguan culture and society. Among her conclusions: Sandinista Front leaders intended a Leninist system from the beginning, with close ties to the East; the major Reagan policy problem is failure to address directly the most important aspect, FSLN internal policies, which in turn planted the seed for the contras; both Sandinistas and contras have broad support, but in a crunch the majority, seeking survival, would probably "go with the wind"; the bitter Nicaraguan dispute is not caused by Soviet meddling, nor by economic and social ills, but by conflict over the shaping and exercise of public power.
