At the heart of The Bureau is a series of eyewitness accounts of how the FBI's special agents accomplish their often dangerous work. We listen as agents use ingenious bugging devices to record for the first time the ceremony in which a Mafia wiseguy becomes a made man. At dawn in Dallas, we ride with members of a SWAT team as they begin their day of "running and gunning" duties by raiding a drug dealer's hideout.

We learn what it's like to endure the rigorous training at Quantico, to go undercover and befriend criminals before arresting them, to play the cat-and-mouse game of counterespionage.

Jeffreys also introduces us to the men and women who make up the Bureau's increasingly varied ranks. The generic G-man of Hoover's day is long gone; the FBI now fields agents with myriad skills and backgrounds. We meet the bank robbery squad in Los Angeles, the counterterrorism operatives in New York, and the brilliant analysts in the Investigative Support Unit, who track serial killers.

What becomes clear is that if Hoover's influence has not disappeared altogether, the FBI is well on its way to reinventing itself and, for the most part, succeeding in its difficult mission. In a way never before possible, Diarmuid Jeffreys shows us the inner workings of the modern FBI. Full of fascinating anecdotes and fresh information, The Bureau provides a dramatic street-level view of how the FBI is waging the daily battle for law and order.