Bernard Diederich

A personal memoir reviewing my youth post WWII and my arrival in Haiti, the beginnings of the Haiti Sun, my English weekly, with reflections while in solitary confinement after my arrest following the bloodiest day of the Duvalier dictatorship. Life in the Haiti of the fifties. A stranger arrives in Haiti and falls in love with the Country and its people. Share his discovery and experiences.

Fran ois "Papa Doc" Duvalier's hold on power in Haiti, initially tenuous, grew stronger as American confrontations with Cuba under President Kennedy fostered a fear that Communism could sweep Haiti if "Papa Doc" were ousted. Nonetheless, several groups of daring rebels took on the formidable task of overthrowing the dictator. The mini-revolutions had little chance of success, but one thing was guaranteed: brutal retribution if the rebels were caught by the Duvalier regime and its militia, the Tontons Macoutes. For the first time, journalist Bernard Diederich reveals the names and personal stories of these rebels, adding color and detail to the tangled storyline of the Duvalier years. This volume continues the chilling history begun in The Price of Blood, which chronicles the years 1957-1961.

This is the terrifying history of how Dr. Fran ois "Papa Doc" Duvalier used terrorism to reach power, and how he institutionalized terrorism as a weapon of the State. The book reports in detail the stories of the many unsuccessful attempts to end Papa Doc's inhuman tyranny and why they failed. The result of years of investigation and exclusive interviews by the author, The Price of Blood is a chilling and shocking account of how a power-mad one-time physician truly morphed from a Dr. Jekyll to a Mr. Hyde.

This is Haiti, pearl of the Antilles, during the presidency of General Paul E. (Bon Papa) Magloire (1950-56). It was an exciting time, when Haitians stood tall, and their country flourished, as reported in the pages of the Haiti Sun newspaper. It was a time when the arts blossomed and tourists discovered a wonderful, bewitching land with the most friendly people in our hemisphere. It was a time when President and Mrs. Paul E. Magloire were welcomed and wined and dined at the White House by President Dwight Eisenhower and Mamie Eisenhower, and yes, they slept in the Lincoln bedroom. Haiti Sun's publisher, Bernard Diederich, who reported on and photographed the period of Bon Papa, co-authored the best-selling book Papa Doc: The Truth about Haiti Today along with Al Burt of the Miami Herald in 1968. The publisher did his very best to present a balanced and unbiased history of Haiti of the period. Those who did not live in this period will be surprised to learn of the other Haiti, the beautiful bygone Haiti in which the future was full of promise.

Certain years are pivotal in global history, and one such year was 1959, from which this book takes its title. 1959 was indeed an historic year during which, among other historic events, Fidel Castro's guerrilla war in Cuba toppled dictator Fulgencio Batista. This intriguing book, drawn from the pages of the author's English-language weekly newspaper, the ""Haiti Sun"", and from his notebooks, provides a journalist's firsthand look at Papa Doc's reaction - at first easing, then tightening even more brutally his tyrannical rule. Diederich then traces the ensuing impacts on Haiti's relations with the U. S., other Caribbean nations, the rest of the Western Hemisphere, and the international community.""1959"" is an historically compelling book which traces a pivotal year that began with Fidel Castro's victory in Cuba, triggering reverberations that changed the Caribbean.

This engaging story of Nicaragua's notorious tyrant is more than a biography. Solidly written for a general as well as scholarly audience, it paints a portrait of the man against a backdrop of Nicaragua's political structure, social circumstance, and economic background, encompassing its relations with other Central American countries and the ramifications of the civil war of 1978-79.

Originally published in 1970, this is the story of Haiti under the rule of Dr François Duvalier. Bernard Diederich lived in Haiti for fourteen years and had personal experience of the early Duvalier days and the period of Maloire’s rule. His work exposes the evil of Duvalier’s rule and the tale of how Duvalier undid US policy.

On May 30, 1961, a hail of bullets ended the life of Generalissimo Rafael Leonidas Trujillo, known to his countrymen as ""The Goat"" for his many revolting excesses, after thirty-one years of brutal rule over the Dominican Republic. This book is a riveting, minute-by-minute account of the plot to kill Trujillo, who was then the Western Hemisphere's most ruthless dictator, and the ferocious wave of revenge that ensued before his regime collapsed. The book also reveals the vacillating role of the United States - and the CIA - in first propping up the dictator, and then supplying weapons to slay him.