"This book is the story of a public servant--Mike Pertschuk--and his fellow activist staffers, whose valiant work on consumer protection have helped millions of Americans. As a major opponent of the tobacco industry year after year, Pertschuk has been advocate, publicist, datalyst, strategist, and exporter abroad of the drive to curb pernicious promotion by the cigarette companies and alert smokers to the dangers and ways out of the habit. His crusade against the tobacco industry--done with more wit and humor than is the custom in Washington--was just a warm-up. In 1964 he became a staff counsel to Senator Warren Magnuson (D-WA), the powerful chairman of the Senate Commerce Committee. There, over the next decade, Pertschuk became the point man for a wave of consumer protection legislation such as this country has never before witnessed. From auto safety to pipeline safety to flammable fabric prevention to radiation safeguards to consumer product safety--to list a few initiatives--Pertschuk persuaded members of the Senate Committee and their staff of their worth. What started in that committee usually ended as national law. Often observing this process firsthand, I admired the diplomatic, conciliatory, but determined way he went about his rounds on Capitol Hill and kept a respectful but ready-to-pounce press accurately informed while making headlines for his Senators, not himself.

Investigatory hearings on consumer health and safety and economic abuses by corporations were prepared by Pertschuk and his dedicated staff with precision. Witnesses made news; hearings were turned into printed volumes that provided a bedrock literature that nourished the escalation of higher expectations and demands of business sellers by the buying public. Corporate lobbyists tried everything short of bribery to stop him. They went to his Senators; they went to him; they tried to be tough, to be friendly, to be reasonable, to be intellectual, and to play the underdog. He listened, reasoned, negotiated, and heard them out. But their calculations and contrivances did not work." -- Ralph Nader.