Tom Mueller

Discussing "Crisis of Conscience: Whistleblowing in an Age of Fraud."

press release: Crisis of Conscience is an eye-opening—sometimes hair-raising—account of the social and legal evolution of whistleblowing, told through riveting legal cases and grounded in an examination of the economic, sociological and psychological forces that breed corruption and complicity, but also the moral decisiveness to call them out. We meet ordinary people who took extraordinary action against wrongdoing from inside drug companies and hospitals, the Ivy League and the Pentagon, trading floors and nuclear plants. Drawing on hundreds of in-depth interviews with whistleblowers, lawyers, watchdogs and experts—and spanning American history from the Revolution to Watergate, the Pentagon Papers to the Panama Papers and beyond—Mueller infuses this thoroughly researched history with vivid characters who give this ambitious, game-changing book an intimate, humanizing scale. Time and again, we are prompted to ask ourselves, “Would I do the same in this crisis situation?” Or better, “Did I do the right thing?” Because as the narrative reminds us, we all have whistleblower moments—and in these troubled times, need the whistleblowing instinct more than ever before.