Heroes or villains, depending on your point of view, suddenly whistleblowers seem to be everywhere. There's a reason for that: We live in both a period of sweeping corruption and a golden age of whistleblowing. Over the past few decades, insiders who expose wrongdoing have gained unprecedented legal and social stature, emerging as the government's best weapon against corporate misconduct—and the citizenry's best defense against government gone bad. Mueller traces the rise of whistleblowing through a series of riveting cases drawn from healthcare and other businesses, Wall Street, and Washington. Drawing on in-depth interviews with more than two hundred whistleblowers and the trailblazing lawyers who arm them for battle—plus politicians, intelligence analysts, government watchdogs, cognitive scientists, and other experts—he anatomizes what inspires some to speak out while the rest of us become complicit in our silence. Whistleblowers, we come to see, are the freethinking, outspoken citizens for whom our republic was conceived. And they are the models we must emulate if our democracy is to survive.