'Gripping history that also informs the present' Sunday Times 'Fascinating . . . Wilford writes engagingly with a telling eye for colourful detail' The Spectator 'A spectacular achievement . . . I loved it' Dominic Sandbrook How the CIA became an instrument of a new covert empire both in America and overseas. In 1947, the United States created the CIA to analyse foreign intelligence, but within a few years the Agency was engaged in other operations - bolstering pro-American governments, overthrowing nationalist leaders, and surveilling domestic dissent - before transforming during the...