Long time tobacco control advocates and newcomers alike are likely to benefit from Dan Zegart's book, Civil warriors: the legal siege on the tobacco industry. The tobacco industry's assault on mankind is arguably the biggest story of corporate greed and wrongdoing of all time, yet the number of books on it is astonishingly few.

Zegart spent five years personally shadowing the key figures for this comprehensive legal saga. He employs his considerable skills as an investigative journalist to weave the page turning saga about how the tobacco industry was finally dragged, kicking and screaming, into a long overdue era of megabuck settlements and stunning courtroom losses.

The story opens with a compelling scene: product liability attorney Ron Motley is sitting by his mother's hospital bed, watching her endure a slow, suffocating …