Unfinished Revolution

The first full-length biography of Daniel Ortega in any language, this exhaustive account draws from a wealth of untapped sources to tell the story of Nicaragua’s continuing struggle for liberation through the prism of the Revolution’s most emblematic yet enigmatic hero. It traces Ortega’s life from his childhood in Nicaragua’s mountainous mining region, where his parents instilled in him a hatred of Yankee imperialism, through a current presidential administration that has many of the earmarks of the authoritarianism he opposed in others. In between, it shows him as a teenager caught up in political agitation, a political prisoner locked in a jail cell for seven years, a strategist and fighter of the Revolution, a leader in the new republic, and a behind-the-scenes powerbroker plotting his own return to power. The portrait that emerges is of a man who wants the best for his country—and often gets it—yet also one prone to making questionable compromises in pursuit of his lofty ambitions.