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Rating: 
Summary: Only American to serve with Contras loves this book
Review: As the only American to serve three tours of duty (86, 87, 88) with ARDE-Frente Sur I am delighted that a second noted author(first was Glenn Garvin) is finally setting the record straight.
Under the war name Peregrino I starved, sickened, sweated, fought, and by the grace of God eventually won with those brave men and women. Never have I met a tougher, more self sacrificing and noble collection of people than the "Contras" and their supporters. Which were 99% of the campesino popluation of Nicaragua. - Peregrino
Rating: 
Summary: This book is trash
Review: Having been in Nicaragua before and during the years in question as a wire-service photographer, this book is a load of right wing garbage. Anybody who wastes their money is this tripe is either a right wing nut case or a sucker. Don't believe a thing in this book, it's packed with outright lies, half-truths and distortions.
Rating:
Summary: Research vs. Propaganda
Review: In Nicaragua, as in the United States, there are still holdout areas of Marxists, still waiting for the Great Revolution to show the world that communism should be the way. In Nicaragua, it is in Leon where there are still murals of Daniel Ortega and the Sandinistas on many buildings. In the US, it's places like Seattle and college faculties. But for those who don't find it "reactionary" to hold the belief that communists are the bad guys, this book is a great source. Instead of still fighting the war for the Sandinistas, this book offers a well-researched and documented history. Having a brother that is married to a Nicaraguan from Corinto, where the CIA mined the harbor, it has been surprising to learn how much the majority of Nicaraguans appreciated Reagan's decision to fight the communists in their country. For those who don't remember, when the Sandinistas were forced to hold elections, the US media and most of the world had predicted a resounding Sandinista victory. They are still bitter that they were wrong, and that the Nicaraguan populace kicked their fellow leftists out of office. For those interested in a rational view of the Contra war and the Sandinistas, this book and Glenn Garvin's "Everybody had his own Gringo" are the best bets. For those who still aren't sure which side to believe, do a little research on what the Sandinistas did to the Moskito indians. And to see who it was in the US that supported, and still supports, the Sandinistas as well as Castro's dictatorship, read "Covert Cadre" by S. Steven Powell.
Rating: 
Summary: Needs more reality
Review: Mr. Brown has done a good job bringing forth the peasant base of the Nicaraguan Contra movement, and comparing it to previous "contra" movements - the Cristeros of Mexico, the Escambritos of Cuba. I would even add my own comparison, the Antonov "green guerrillas" of Tambov, Russia, in 1920-21. Yet these movements did not grow like the Contras, nor last ten years, and the reason is obvious, although discounted in Mr. Brown's book. And that is because the original hypothesis - of being financed and controlled by the CIA and rich exiles - is still valid. Without the Somocista command structure, the money coming in from Miami and Washington, these Segovian highlanders would have been flattened like their historical predecessors and reduced to mere academic footnotes.
Rating:
Summary: Research vs. Propaganda
Review: The MILPAS Highlanders who forged the original anti-Sandinista
forces crossed into Honduras in mid-late 1981 to obtain
ammunition. If the Honduran forces had simply provided
the rebels w/the supplies they needed, then there would
not have had to have been the CIA intrigue of creating
a counterrevolutionary force from the scraps of a defeated
army. The National Guard had been defeated in a
campaign similar to the one the MILPAS rebels were
involved in. The CIA selected the Guard officers to lead the FDN
most likely for the fact that many Guardsmen were
trained or schooled in the US and had contacts with
many US military officers and CIA agents. The
Highlanders did not have any such advantage.
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