In the thirty-five years since the violent overthrow of Chilean President Salvador Allende, former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger has vehemently denied U.S. involvement. Almost with the same breath, Kissinger suggests that the democratically elected Allende represented Soviet aggression in Latin America, therefore posing a threat to the United States' physical security. Newly released documents reveal the Nixon administration's efforts to undermine Allende, while indicating that Nixon and Kissinger did not believe the socialist regime in Santiago endangered the United States or even had close ties to Moscow. The White House feared that the Chilean experiment would encourage other Latin American countries to challenge U.S. hegemony. Nixon, Kissinger, and Allende explores the president's cultural and intellectual prejudices against Latin America and the economic pressures that induced action against Allende.

"For anyone interested in the economic motivations that led the Nixon administration to intervene in Chile, or how Nixon spoke about Latin America and the issue of democracy in private, this is nevertheless a useful book. It is a good book for those wanting to examine the role that dependency and capitalism played in Chile and it will be helpful alongside books on the same subject by scholars like Haslam and Kristian Gustafson for encouraging students to explore different arguments related to U.S. involvement in Chile." - H-Net: Humanities and Social Science Reviews Online