A Question Of Intent

Now in paperback: former FDA commissioner David Kessler's non-fiction legal thriller about his agency's fight with Big Tobacco. Dubbed "Eliot Knessler" by The Washington Post , due to the way he resurrected a moribund government agency, FDA Commissioner David Kessler launched a carefully considered, thorough, and aggressive assault against the previously unassailable tobacco industry. His attempt to regulate tobacco as a drug was met with all of the industry's now notorious practices: legal stonewalling, manipulation of "bought" elected officials, intimidation, and outright lies. Kessler tackled all of these challenges with the vigor of a man perhaps outgunned but not outmaneuvered. At the height the FDA's legal battle, U.S. News and World Report called Kessler "somebody you can tell your children about" and compared him to the protagonists of Mr. Smith Goes to Washington and To Kill a Mockingbird . Like those classic American stories, A Question of Intent is about the search for truth, the choices people make, and right and wrong. It is about moral courage.