Latin America experienced 320 attempted coups over the period 1900–2014. Fabrice Lehoucq’s book examines why coups occurred so often and what explains the significant variation across the region. Lehoucq’s theoretical approach emphasizes how struggles for power shape the nature of political regimes and their patterns of instability. Whereas struggles for political power in nineteenth-century Latin America were often fought on the battlefield, in the twentieth century they mainly originated from within the armed forces. Specifically, he argues that monopolization of power motivated coalitions between opposition actors and dissident military officers to remove political leaders. Drawing on an impressive data collection effort, Lehoucq shows that successful coups in Latin America tended to follow the military overthrow of executive leaders, particularly in nondemocratic regimes. This political dynamic led several countries in the region to fall into coup traps. Lehoucq also finds that successful military plots were substantially more likely when opposition actors supported dissident military actors. In-depth qualitative analyses covering all countries in the region deepen of our understanding of most unstable and typical cases and also explain why a handful of countries escaped from the coup trap. Greater engagement with the broader literature on coups could have helped clarify whether the book’s theoretical and empirical insights apply beyond Latin America or mainly explain regional trends. In any case, Lehoucq’s refreshing argument and his combination of qualitative and quantitative analyses offer an innovative take of one of the central questions of the political history of Latin America. Hopefully, this book will inspire the new generation of scholars of Latin American politics and stimulate broader comparative research on the subject.