Enrique Oltuski, chronicler of and participant in the Cuban revolution once rightly said, "No book can ever convey the greatness of a people in revolt." Jean-Pierre Reed’s magisterial life work, Sandinista Narratives:Religion, Sandinismo, and Emotions in the Making of the Nicaraguan Insurrection and Revolution, is destined to be the book against which that claim is measured.
— John Foran, University of California at Santa Barbara
Sandinista Narratives is one of the most interesting and sophisticated analyses of the “subjective” side of revolution which I have read. Jean-Pierre Reed emphasizes the importance of emotions—especially outrage and hope—as well as popular cultural idioms, ideology, and collective identity in Nicaragua’s revolutionary process. He makes his case by focusing closely on the personal testimonies of a great many ordinary Nicaraguans as well as activists. This book should interest anyone who wants to understand the role of culture, broadly understood, in the Nicaraguan Revolution and in politics more generally.
— Jeff Goodwin, New York University
Reed’s clear and compelling text is perhaps our most powerful statement yet on the study of revolution and insurgency that assumes people—their ideologies, their emotions, their cultures, and hence the societies they create—really mattered. Deftly interpolating the people of Nicaragua, cultural theorists, students of revolution, and an impressive range of social science and humanistic scholars, Reed finds a narrative that reminds us that in Nicaragua and elsewhere, people, if not always under the conditions of their own choosing, boldly and bravely make their own history.
— Eric Selbin, Southwestern University