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On September 11, 1973, President Salvador Allende of Chile was deposed in a violent coup led by General Augusto Pinochet. The coup had been in the works for months, even years. Shortly after giving a farewell speech to his people, Allende died of gunshot wounds—whether inflicted by his own hand or an assassin’s remains uncertain. Pinochet ruled Chile for a quarter century, but the short rise and bloody fall of Allende is still the subject of fierce historical debate.In a world in the throes of the Cold War, the seeming backwater of Chile became the host of a very hot conflict—with Henry Kissinger and the Western establishment aligned with Pinochet’s insurgents against a socialist coalition of students, workers, Pablo Neruda, and folk singers, led by the brilliant ideologue Allende.