After a trip to Central America on behalf of the Canadian arm of the charity Oxfam, Cockburn crafted an album featuring world-music influences and lyrics concerning life in the third world.

He was moved by the plight of Guatemalan refugees in southern Mexico ("On the Rio Lancantún one hundred thousand wait"), and wrote the song "If I Had a Rocket Launcher" which reached a high of #88 on the Billboard Hot 100 charts with an associated music video regularly played on MTV.

The single "Lovers in a Dangerous Time" contains some of Cockburn's most recognizable lyric writing form, with the picturesque line "got to kick at the darkness till it bleeds daylight".

"Lovers in a Dangerous Time" and "If I Had a Rocket Launcher" were covered by the Canadian bands Barenaked Ladies and Cottage Industry, respectively, on the 1991 Cockburn tribute album Kick at the Darkness.

In a retrospective review, AllMusic critic Brett Hartenbach wrote the album "passionately and eloquently details what [Cockburn] had seen while in Nicaragua and Guatemala... despite a few less than compelling tracks, is the work of an artist at his peak.