At the nexus of politics, sociology, development studies, nationalism studies and Latin American studies, this work takes Nicaragua as a case study to engage and advance upon on Benedict Anderson's ideas on the origins and spread of nationalism.

At the nexus of politics, sociology, development studies, nationalism studies and Latin American studies, this work takes Nicaragua as a case study to engage and advance upon on Benedict Anderson's ideas on the origins and spread of nationalism.

After Nicaragua achieved independence from Spain in 1821, it suffered a series of conflicts culminating in the two-year National War. When that war ended in 1857, Nicaragua was in ruins. The Everyday Nation-State explores what followed: the intersection of nation-state formation and everyday life in nineteenth-century Nicaragua. Rather than focus on the “invented traditions” of anthems, marches, and memorials that convey and reproduce an established sense of national identity and belonging, this work analyzes how such feelings emerged in the struggles of local communities over political authority, identity, and legitimacy. Based on extensive research of court cases, land registries, census materials, correspondence, government publications, and newspapers, The Everyday Nation-State connects the local with the national, prizing the narratives of commoners, while placing them in the larger regional and historical context, and challenging the way we approach the study of the nation-state. Justin Wolfe’s exploration of quotidian social life and politics in nineteenth-century Nicaragua reveals how the diversities of economy, ethnicity, and geography engendered multiple experiences of nation. In turn, these experiences invigorated a new Nicaraguan citizenry as it fragmented local community power and autonomy in the face of a nascent modern state. This local perspective also provides a key to understanding the rise of twentieth-century figures such as revolutionary Augusto C. Sandino and dictator Anastasio Somoza.

Nicaragua: Emerging from the Shadow of the Eagle details the country's unique history, culture, economics, politics, and foreign relations. Its historical coverage considers Nicaragua from pre-Columbian and colonial times as well as during the nationalist liberal era, the U.S. Marine occupation, the Somoza dictatorship, the Sandinista revolution and government, the conservative restoration after 1990, and consolidation of the FSLN's power since the return of Daniel Ortega to the presidency in 2006. The thoroughly revised and updated sixth edition features new material covering political, economic, and social developments since 2011. This includes expanded discussions on economic diversification, women and gender, and social programs. Students of Latin American politics and history will learn the how the interventions by the United States 'the eagle' to 'the north' have shaped Nicaraguan political, economic, and cultural life, but also the extent to which Nicaragua is increasingly emerging from the eagle's shadow.

Sandinista Narratives is an analysis of the role of agency in the Nicaraguan Revolution and its aftermath. Jean-Pierre Reed argues that the insurrection in Nicaragua was shaped by political contingency, action-specific subjectivity, and popular culture. He also examines how Sandinista ideology contributed to state-building in Nicaragua while tracing the role of post-revolutionary Sandinismo as a political identity.

The Ends of Modernization studies the relations between Nicaragua and the United States in the crucial years during and after the Cold War. David Johnson Lee charts the transformation of the ideals of modernization, national autonomy, and planned development as they gave way to human rights protection, neoliberalism, and sustainability. Using archival material, newspapers, literature, and interviews with historical actors in countries across Latin America, the United States, and Europe, Lee demonstrates how conflict between the United States and Nicaragua shaped larger international development policy and transformed the Cold War. In Nicaragua, the backlash to modernization took the form of the Sandinista Revolution which ousted President Anastasio Somoza Debayle in July 1979. In the wake of the earlier reconstruction of Managua after the devastating 1972 earthquake and instigated by the revolutionary shift of power in the city, the Sandinista Revolution incited radical changes that challenged the frankly ideological and economic motivations of modernization. In response to threats to its ideological dominance regionally and globally, the United States began to promote new paradigms of development built around human rights, entrepreneurial internationalism, indigenous rights, and sustainable development. Lee traces the ways Nicaraguans made their country central to the contest over development ideals beginning in the 1960s, transforming how political and economic development were imagined worldwide. By illustrating how ideas about ecology and sustainable development became linked to geopolitical conflict during and after the Cold War, The Ends of Modernization provides a history of the late Cold War that connects the contest between the two then-prevailing superpowers to trends that shape our present, globalized, multipolar world.