Expanding on his attention-getting pieces in The Nation, Zegart paints a frightening portrait of the most cold-blooded legal offensives that Big Tobacco could buy, the human toll on anyone who got in its way -- whistle-blowers who fear for their lives, journalists who fear for their careers -- and the rise of the relentless, inspired strategy that finally pierced the industry's seemingly impenetrable armor.

An eyewitness account based on five years spent travelling with Motley, hundreds of interviews and over 200,000 pages of internal corporate documents, this legal adventure weaves together firsthand stories of plaintiffs, lawyers, jurors, and scientists. Leading up through the tobacco industry's once-inconceivable multi-hundred-billion-dollar defeat, "Civil Warriors" is an unforgettable chronicle of the American legal system at its best and worst.