Assuming the Risk: The Mavericks, the Lawyers, & the Whistle-Blowers Who Beat Big Tobacco

A washed-up actor-turned-paralegal steals a cache of internal tobacco company documents. An unreconstructed Southerner, who once burned a cross in a neighbor's yard, takes a poor black man's case against a cigarette maker to court, prays at his bedside, and weeps at his grave. A navy pilot who was nearly ordered to drop nuclear weapons on Prague returns to become a millionaire asbestos attorney. A rock-and-roll-singing, twenty-seven-year-old district attorney brings down one of the most powerful political figures in Mississippi and goes on to become the state's attorney general.

Michael Orey covered the tobacco wars as both a writer and editor for the American Lawyer. A graduate of the University of Michigan Law School, he is now an editor at the Wall Street Journal. He lives in Hastings-on-Hudson, New York.