Bokelskere.no

This book was published in 1998, several years after the conflicts over Nicaragua and El Salvador had long subsided, yet it still reads very fresh and surprisingly relevant. Although Dr. LeoGrande covers the whole fifteen-year period from 1977 to 1992, the core of the book deals with the eight years of the Reagan era. He focuses both on the struggles within the Republican administration and the mastery of the White House in getting support in Congress for widely unpopular policies towards Central America. How President Reagan managed to split the Congressional Democrats and win votes for his military interventions in El Salvador and Nicaragua has clearly relevance for understanding the present Congressional deadlock. The book also provides an excellent overview concerning the events in the affected countries in the same period. The reader remains in the end with the question whether the loss of lives and the wide-spread destruction was all in vain.