Racing across a canvas that spans the legendary Berlin Base in the 1950s - the front line of the simmering Cold War - to the Soviet invasion of Hungary, the Bay of Pigs, the Afghan war, the Gorbachev putsch, and other major theatres of operation for the CIA, The Company tells a thrilling story of agents imprisoned in double lives, fighting an enemy that was amoral, elusive, formidable.

Littell tells it like it was: CIA agents, fighting not only the good fight, but sometimes the bad one as well. Littell also brilliantly lays bare the warring within the Company to add another dimension to the spy vs. spy game: the battles between the counter-intelligence agents in Washington and the covert action boys in the field.

The Company is the Cold War's devastating truth, its entertaining tale, its last word.