"Footfall" is a Larry Niven book from the mid-80's. That makes for some major differences between it and a similar book written today. It's also back when Niven was still in his prime writing years.
It's a book in four parts.
In part one American astronomers discover a space ship approaching Earth. They found that it dropped off it's ram scoop (a device for collecting fuel from interstellar hydrogen) so they clearly came from another star and were planning to stay. They attempt communication.
Besides the usual first contact stuff the book also covers the American interaction with the Soviets. How much do we trust each other? Is this all an American trick? Can the Americans put an ambassador on the Soviet station?
In part two the aliens attack. They blow up the dams, military installations, possible military installations, and all major intersections. The leave the cities largely alone since they just want us to surrender, not wipe us out.
Beside the human perspective we also start reading about the alien perspective. How they got the technology they're using, their society, how the differences in cultures influence how successfully they predict our behavior, and conflicts on the ship.
In part three we're not just surrendering like they think we should so they drop a dinosaur killer asteroid into the Indian Ocean.
In part four we take the battle to space when we launch an Orion1 ship.
The book covers some people in the Soviet Union political system and their conflicts with the KGB who think everything is an American trick. It covers a group of survivalists in the northwest United States. It covers the people captured off the space station. It covers the American government inside Cheyenne Mountain. It covers some people who manage to move around within the US moving among the various groups.
It's a pretty good book. Usually alien invasion stories are saved for the movies while space wars, semi-peaceful alien visitors, and galactic empires are saved for the books.
1The Orion Project was put together back in 1957 to build a atom bomb based launching system for space ships. The idea was to build huge ships with a flat bottom. A series of nukes would be shot under the ship and detonated. Each explosion launching it higher into the sky. Today we know that's absolute madness. But back then atomic this and nuclear that were the answers to everything. The Orion Project was canceled because they found out that setting off dozens or hundreds of bombs in the atmosphere would be bad for people.
This project included Freeman Dyson who is best know for his idea of the Dyson Sphere which Larry Niven modified into the Ringworld or Niven Ring.
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