At the time of Ortega's return to the presidency, attorney and award-winning author Steven Hendrix was on the ground in Nicaragua working for the U.S. Agency for International Development. "The New Nicaragua: Lessons in Development, Democracy, and Nation-Building for the United States" is Hendrix's eyewitness account of the changes going on there.

What Hendrix found in the new Nicaragua is a decidedly mixed bag: a presidential campaign marked by dirty tricks and backroom deals, yet an election held under the first neutral comprehensive observation ever in the developing world; an overt...