Deep Black recounts the United States' clandestine intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR) program from its inception at the start of the Cold War up to the mid-1980s.

Burrows concentrates on aspects of the program which use technical means of collecting intelligence by employing strategic aircraft, satellites and other electronic techniques instead of more traditional espionage activities.

Additionally, the work details how the program adapts from, or is directly related to seminal events of the era such as early Soviet successes in their space program, the Cuban Missile Crisis, the downing of Korean Air Lines Flight 007 and the Space Shuttle Challenger disaster while framing the intragovernmental competition among organizations of the US Intelligence Community (IC) for tax dollars, equipment and influence.

[1] In The New York Times, John Newhouse gives a generally favorable review of Deep Black while taking nuanced exception to Burrows’ depiction of the Sputnik launch as "the most pernicious problem" of the Eisenhower White House.

Carter Page, who served as a foreign-policy adviser to (then candidate) President Donald Trump during his successful 2016 presidential campaign, cited Deep Black while a midshipman at the Naval Academy in a Trident Scholar Program report in 1993.