Jerry Israel first spotted Barbara McQuade’s potential in 1989, when she took his first-year Michigan Law School class on criminal procedure. Unlike some of her classmates who vied to be noticed, “she was not one who had their hand waving,” says Israel, now a professor emeritus. But “she was top of the class among the final exams.”

And these days, McQuade, fifty-nine, is getting plenty of attention. Already a high-profile legal star after serving as U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Michigan, McQuade’s horizons have widened to include her own professorship at the law school, regular guest appearances on MSNBC, a panelist on the cleverly named podcast SistersInLaw, and soon, her first book.

Next month, Penguin Random House will publish Attack from Within: How Disinformation Is Sabotaging America. Her deeply researched book discusses the history of disinformation in the United States and her fear of what is happening to democracy. She explores the tactics of Hitler, Mussolini, and Stalin, and looks at the psychology behind winning support for their ideas.

“We all want to be part of a group and so we’ll signal our allegiance to a group, even if it means saying something that isn’t true,” McQuade says.

The book came about after McQuade wrote an opinion piece in the New York Times warning of the danger of having election deniers in key state positions across the country.

“An editor reached out and said, ‘How would you like to write a book about that?’,” McQuade recalls. After her 1,200-word essay, she did not think she had much more to say. But once she dug deep into the history of disinformation, McQuade committed herself to writing each morning from 6 a.m. to 9 a.m. “I got a cup of coffee and went straight to my computer and started working.”

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Born in Detroit and raised in Sterling Heights, McQuade always had her sights set on attending college in Ann Arbor. “As a kid growing up in metro Detroit, Michigan is thought of as a world-class institution here in our own state,” McQuade says, “and I couldn’t imagine aspiring to anything more.”

Arriving in 1983, she lived in Bursley Hall on North Campus, “which has its pros and cons. It’s quite remote and far away from where some of the action is on Central Campus.” But she made close friends and enjoyed studying outside in the wooded setting near the School of Music, prompting her to spend a second year in the dorm.

Just as she knew she wanted to come to Michigan, McQuade also wanted to work at the Michigan Daily. She showed up at its Maynard St. building on her first day on campus and spent all of her four years at the paper, working on the sports staff and rising to sports editor.

After graduation, McQuade spent a year on staff at the Rochester, New York Democrat and Chronicle before returning to Ann Arbor for law school. Initially, she intended her Michigan Law stint as a way to accumulate material for stories when she returned to the news business.

Israel’s criminal procedure class helped turn her toward a legal career. From there, she went on to a clerkship, a brief stint in private practice, and then to the U.S. Attorney’s office.

The prosecutor’s job was an immediate fit. “There’s really nothing better than that, to stand up in a courtroom and say, ‘Barbara McQuade on behalf of the United States.’ I mean, it gave me chills every time I said it.”

She was named U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District in 2010 by President Obama, whom she sat next to in a class photo of the new prosecutors. “It was a responsibility and an honor, and it really just shot me out of bed every morning to be able to do that work,” she says. “The work was interesting. It was challenging, and it was important. And, I found it very fulfilling.”

After prosecuting cases such as the Underwear Bomber, who tried to blow up a Northwest Airlines jet, and the corruption trial of former Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick, McQuade resigned in March 2017 at President Trump’s request. She quickly landed at Michigan, having already taught at the University of Detroit Mercy law school, and was thrilled to be back in Ann Arbor with her husband and four children.

Before the kids scattered to begin their adult lives, the family attended concerts at Hill Auditorium, and all manner of sporting events, from women’s soccer to lacrosse to softball, as well as football and basketball. They went camping in the Upper Peninsula and visited a variety of national parks. At home, McQuade is a fan of Blue Tractor, Condado Tacos, and like many Ann Arbor residents, misses the Prickly Pear.

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Thanks to her TV appearances, McQuade has a measure of recognition. She was stopped once in Metro Airport by a fan, and sometimes notices people glancing at her. And her voice is now familiar to podcast listeners through SistersInLaw, where she is a panelist with fellow attorneys Joyce Vance, Jill Wine-Banks, and Kimberly Atkins Stohr, a seasoned broadcaster who is also an opinion writer with the Boston Globe.

The quartet was put together in 2021 by Politicon, a Los Angeles production company, which spotted them on MSNBC and elsewhere. The women take turns hosting, discussing all manner of legal topics in greater depth than they can on their TV appearances. They regularly take on Donald Trump’s courtroom battles, states’ ballot issues, such as Ohio’s recent vote on abortion rights, and cases like the conviction last fall of crypto fraudster Sam Bankman-Fried.

“We each have areas of expertise,” says Atkins Stohr. “When it comes to national security, we naturally ask Barb.” To lighten things up, there’s a chat segment. During a December episode, the panelists debated the choice of teams for the College Football Playoff and whether Florida State was unfairly left out. When Atkins Stohr was about to get married, the group talked about their respective decisions whether to take their husbands’ names. (Stohr added her husband’s name to hers; McQuade kept her maiden name.)

With her years of experience in the courtroom and on TV, “Barb didn’t need any tips” as a podcaster, says Atkins Stohr. “She’s a natural.”

McQuade says the podcast fits in with her personal mission to explain complex but crucial issues. “At this stage in my career, all I really want to do is have a positive impact in some way,” she says.

Teaching—and educating the public—fit that goal. “I am at that rare place in life where I am content,” she says. “I love everything I’m doing now. I have a really happy life.”