Pulsating with action from the first chapter to the last, Dangerous Company: Misadventures of a “Foreign Agent” is a memoir that reads like a thriller. Sam Patten left US politics behind when he went overseas to promote democracy during George W. Bush's first administration. Then he became an advisor to political leaders in countries like Iraq, Georgia, Ukraine, the Congo, Nigeria, and Mexico.

When Washington went on the hunt for anyone who could have helped the Russians elect Donald Trump as US president, Patten was a “usual suspect.” Following charges referred by Special Counsel Robert Mueller, in 2018 he was convicted of failing to register as a foreign agent under a seldom-enforced 1938 statute.

In Dangerous Company, Patten gives us front-row seats to Russia during Vladimir Putin’s early years, the newly independent states where “color revolutions” ushered in both democratic change and more corruption, and the inside of a legal hurricane that consumed the Trump administration. But beyond the action, this is a story of an America that may no longer exist. Patten’s adventures seem to be chasing the twilight of the American Century—from World War I to the US withdrawal from Afghanistan. The time when the United States sought to influence powers around the world has faded into the present moment, in which there is more discussion about which countries are influencing us.

Dangerous Company is a fast-paced, colorful, and insightful account of an American abroad and at home over the past quarter century.