Peter Strzok lost a distinguished 20+ career in counterintelligence with the FBI because he had the misfortune of serving during the Trump administration. Strzok’s book is yet more evidence of the extraordinary self-interest, greed, lack of patriotism, stupidity, and downright smallness of this president and the ways in which it has corrupted a system of government we depend upon. Strzok outlines his early career, but spends the bulk of the narrative describing the two diametrically opposed investigations that would bring him down: Midyear Exams, the investigation into Hillary Clinton’s careless handling of official email, and Crossfire Hurricane, the investigation into the many Trump campaign workers who involved themselves with Russians in ways calculated to help his campaign. These stories are familiar and Strzok does not add much new, except for insights into the fastidious and dogged men and women working on these cases. I walked about with a new respect for the care and seriousness the FBI takes his mission, in spite of all attempts—mainly from the Chief Executive—to distract them from finding facts. The outrageousness of behavior at the top would be shocking if it was not by now so familiar, and it’s that weariness that, after four years, began to erode the very institutions we depend on. Why write the book? Strzok asks in the end; because the Russians are coming for your democracy and mine relentlessly, and this week’s headlines about hacks into numerous government agencies underline the terrifying seriousness of this. We cannot ever again allow one unhinged executive to open the door for them.