The Company: A Novel of the CIA Book

Back when I was in middle school, I would have given my left nut to be James Bond (as portrayed by Sean Connery, not Roger Moore). I read all the books (they were a link from reading comics to reading actual books without pictures) and watched all the movies about a half dozen times each. The lure of being a super spy was great. I even remember reading that the CIA used to show James Bond films as part of their training.

The CIA's version of Bond, as rendered here (code name: Sorcerer), was an overweight alcoholic who played opera full blast in his office just in case the Commies were trying to listen in on his conversations, so any illusions I might still have about Bondian spycraft (drinking martinis, shagging supermodel villainesses, driving sports cars, fighting lethal hat throwing henchman) have now officially evaporated.

This James Michner-like tome charts the history of the CIA from their early days in Berlin up until the Gorbachev-Yeltsin years. The CIA went from a unit who did intelligence gathering and counter-intelligence to covertly trying to topple regimes.

The book can be a load at times, but some of the early set pieces work well, specifically the ones dedicated to the Hungarian's attempted overthrow of Communism in 1956 and the CIA's covert overt Bay of Pigs debacle in 1961. If true, the way they tried to kill Castro is laughable.* Beyond that featured point in Agency history, this colossus of a book has a tendency to get repetitive - CIA agent in danger/captured, let's get him out. Didn't this happen 250 pages ago? Why yes, Jeff, yes it did.

Littell populates his tale with historical figures and gamely tries to bring the past to life ("So Joe, how was Young Frankenstein?" Or "They made love while listening to new pop music sensation Madonna singing her current hit, "Like a Virgin""). Yeesh! JFK and his brother Bobby (hubris) and especially Ronald Reagan (doddering) come off poorly, as rendered here. The character that livens up the book each and every time he appears is the above mentioned Sorcerer. The fat man has moxie.

If you like spy novels or historical fiction, I would say give it a go.

*Bayer aspirin dosed with quick killing bacteria.