Biographies, a popular genre among the general public but not so much among academic historians, are useful and necessary because they help us comprehend the ways in which men and women experience history. In biographies, one may say, the abstract becomes concrete, and context becomes experience. This is especially so in works like Tanya Harmer's biography of Beatriz Allende that explore the lives of individuals who did not occupy prominent public positions, even if they were close to them or suffered with singular intensity the consequences of events over which they had some agency but little control.
Born in 1943, Beatriz Allende grew up in the Allende Bussi household, a loving and comfortable environment but one marked by the career of the father, Salvador, who won his first senatorial election in 1945 and stayed in the upper chamber of the Chilean Congress until he was elected president in 1970. Harmer...