A Drop of Treason: Philip Agee and His Exposure of the CIA by Jonathan Stevenson is a detailed and comprehensive account of Agee both before and after his controversial book on the workings of the CIA. A great book as both history and as nonfiction that almost reads like fiction.

I am of the age to remember Agee's book and might have a little more memory of it than many my age because my father was part of the intelligence community at-large (NSA and Naval Security Group, Fort Meade) so the book was discussed my senior year of high school at home.

This book is a perfect example of not being what I initially expected it to be, and my being thankful it wasn't. I expected the usual story of what he did at the CIA and what people thought of him, maybe a little about what he did after publication. But this did all of that and so much more. It is far more even-handed than most books about intelligence people who turn without sidestepping both Agee's positives and negatives.

I think what stood out for me was that even when it was largely a biography like any other, Stevenson made sure to keep everything in context. What Agee did, why (or at least why he said he did) he did it, and the repercussions to Agee and the Agency.

I think most readers will come away with a better and far more nuanced understanding of who Agee was and why he did what he did in the manner he did it. I will always have a difficult time with the naming of names, at least the names of field agents. That is putting people's lives at risk as well as their careers. I also grapple with the idea of whether he tried to do what was "right" because he believed that strongly or because he simply wanted to be visible (call it hubris, call it ego, whatever). But Stevenson has given me the information to make how I feel a bit better informed.

I hesitate to state explicitly how I feel toward Agee because the book does, I think, an excellent job of offering the reader plenty of pros and cons, sometimes told with a slant but not too often and not too slant. Where I ended up with my opinion may well be a different place from where you end up, so I don't want to make it sound like the book argued for the position I take. I think anyone interested in US intelligence, both in the Cold War era as well as today, will come away with new insight and maybe a new appreciation of what it took, right or wrong, for Agee to do what he did.

Reviewed from a copy made available by the publisher via NetGalley. ( )