Tanya Harmer's book is an exhaustively researched study of the Chilean revolution in the context of regional international relations. Drawing on archival sources from seven nations and numerous interviews with participants in the events of the early 1970s, she argues that the demise of the Via Chilena should be understood in the context of a regional Cold War. While the United States certainly played its part, the struggle in Chile was, she asserts, far less of an East–West conflict than a contest between regional actors, particularly the United States and Brazil on one side and Cuba and Chile on the other. The author also concludes that previous scholarship has seriously overestimated the importance of Washington's role in the demise of the Allende government.

In developing these arguments, Harmer provides a detailed account of the interactions between Chilean, Cuban, US and Brazilian officials, recounting both Castro's growing admiration for Allende and his regime's increasing commitment to Allende's success. The narrative paints a picture of a US response to Allende's election that was less strident than that of Brazil's military rulers, who urged the Nixon administration to take a far more aggressive stance toward the new government in Santiago. The author also offers insight into the intense debates going on within the Allende administration regarding relations with the United States. In particular, there were sharp differences over whether a form of regional détente could be achieved with Washington even as the Unidad Popular (Popular Unity, UP) government sought to reorient the country's diplomatic and economic relations away from the United States and Europe, and toward the Soviet Union and many of the neighbouring states in the Americas. Harmer concludes that Allende and many of his advisers took an overly optimistic view of the chances that the Nixon administration would be open to negotiating a modus vivendi that would ensure the survival of the Via Chilena.

While its principal focus remains on the web of international relations that enveloped the Allende government, the book does not neglect the domestic side of the UP story. The author strongly suggests that ultimately, flaws in the regime and the strength of its domestic opposition proved far more important than international affairs in bringing about the overthrow of Allende. As Harmer notes, the UP was in fact a deeply divided political coalition, struggling with the divergent courses of action proposed by the Communist and Socialist parties, and grappling with the militant actions of the far Left. Furthermore, Allende and many of his ministers maintained a naive faith in the apolitical stance of most senior military officers. The attempt to transform Chile into a socialist society appears to have been doomed from the outset by the UP's internal divisions and its opponents' key weapon, the Chilean armed forces.

The study certainly adds considerably to our understanding of events during Allende's presidency, especially in terms of regional international relations and their role in the developments that eventually led to his overthrow. Yet the author tends to overemphasise distinctions between her work and that of earlier studies. She asserts that Henry Kissinger's assessment that the United States had been given far more credit for the coup than it deserved is more accurate than the interpretations of many past works on the subject. Previous studies have certainly detailed the role of the United States in terms of economic sanctions and covert actions, and in the years immediately after the coup some authors depicted the toppling of the government as a simple manipulation of Chilean actors by Washington operatives. However, serious scholars familiar with other US interventions such as those in Guatemala and Iran have long known that in those actions the United States never simply manipulated or dictated the course of events. Rather, it used diplomatic and economic pressure combined with threats and covert actions to help create the conditions that would make a coup more likely. The Nixon administration from the start pursued a course of economic warfare and covert support for the regime's domestic opponents to support such tactics as the anti-Allende media campaign and the truck owners' strike in October 1972. Those facts and the role of Washington that they define remain unaltered by this study. At the same time, the focus on a regional Cold War and the further elucidation of the parts played by actors such as Cuba and Brazil are valuable contributions. However, as the author herself points out, much of what transpired at this time in the region represented a very old story that had repeated itself time and again long before the term ‘Cold War’ ever came into use. The United States as the dominant hemispheric power would not tolerate challenges from Latin American nations to its economic and strategic interests, and worked assiduously, as it had during much of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, to reduce or preclude the influence of any powerful European competitor in Latin America.

Although the author's interpretation of events in Chile may not diverge as dramatically as she suggests from the views of other scholars, this book is an important new contribution to the study of international relations during the Allende years. It offers new insight into the dealings between key actors, in particular Cuba, Brazil, the United States and of course Chile itself. It provides another promising example of the new materials now available on an era of inter-American relations when activists on both the left and the right believed that their struggles would have implications not only for the region, but for the entire world.