The USA is in the grip of malevolent invaders from another planet. They land at key points throughout the nation, attach themselves to human hosts and through them seize communications, industry and the government. The protagonist and narrator is the working head of the operations team which must stop the invaders and which can trust no one...since the President, the Cabinet, key leaders may have already been taken by the Puppet Masters. The lead cannot even trust the commander of his team...his own father. The Puppet Masters was published in 1951 in the early, haunting years of the Cold War. Fears that "secret" Communists would infiltrate the government are certainly expressed in this novel with the "alien invaders" serving as surrogates for imagined or real Communists. In a more immediate way, the novel is one of Heinlein's early masterpieces, an "adult" novel written at a time when he was primarily occupied with the YA novels for Scribners which were important and influential. Appearing first in Horace Gold's pioneering Galaxy Magazine. the novel has remained continuously in print, its premise, pace and furious conflict far outliving the Cold War and the Communist Menace.