What do you think?
Rate this book
Golden Holocaust: Origins of the Cigarette Catastrophe and the Case for Abolition
The cigarette is the deadliest artifact in the history of human civilization. It is also one of the most beguiling, thanks to more than a century of manipulation at the hands of tobacco industry chemists. In Golden Holocaust , Robert N. Proctor draws on reams of formerly-secret industry documents to explore how the cigarette came to be the most widely-used drug on the planet, with six trillion sticks sold per year. He paints a harrowing picture of tobacco manufacturers conspiring to block the recognition of tobacco-cancer hazards, even as they ensnare legions of scientists and politicians in a web of denial. Proctor tells heretofore untold stories of fraud and subterfuge, and he makes the strongest case to date for a simple yet ambitious a ban on the manufacture and sale of cigarettes.
774 pages, Hardcover
First published February 28, 2012
34 people are currently reading
887 people want to read
About the author
Robert N. Proctor
13 books35 followersAmerican historian of science and Professor of the History of Science at Stanford University.While a professor of the history of science at the University of Pennsylvania in 1999, he became the first historian to testify against the tobacco industry.
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 21 of 21 reviews
February 18, 2013
"I told you so," she patronizingly railed to her parents as she hefted the 752-page tome of proof,
"Golden Holocaust: Origins of the Cigarette Catastrophe and the Case for Abolition." Of course they didn't want to hear it; and, they definitely didn't want to read it because as addicts what good would it do except to make them despise even more the very companies they had helped to wealth. Why make themselves more miserable with indisputable facts, many provided by the tobacco industry's own research--hidden, lied about, bribed for and now made public for a scheduled amount of time before being sequestered again. On the cover, Van Gogh's painting of a skeleton with a flaming cigarette in mouth is tombstone perfect, a visionary abbreviation for a macabre conspiracy proven true.
What vexing irony that the government of the United States criminalized the farming of hemp and continues to subsidize the farming of tobacco. Not surprising though when you follow the money as explicitly revealed by Robert N. Proctor. This book encompasses a great body of work, engaging and informative--all those damningly, inconvenient truths documented and footnoted. It is so skillfully and passionately written that it reads like a crime thriller with fascinating historical pictures. Read it and weep, or curse, or build legislating fires of doom on an industry that continues to stalk and prey.
"Golden Holocaust: Origins of the Cigarette Catastrophe and the Case for Abolition." Of course they didn't want to hear it; and, they definitely didn't want to read it because as addicts what good would it do except to make them despise even more the very companies they had helped to wealth. Why make themselves more miserable with indisputable facts, many provided by the tobacco industry's own research--hidden, lied about, bribed for and now made public for a scheduled amount of time before being sequestered again. On the cover, Van Gogh's painting of a skeleton with a flaming cigarette in mouth is tombstone perfect, a visionary abbreviation for a macabre conspiracy proven true.
What vexing irony that the government of the United States criminalized the farming of hemp and continues to subsidize the farming of tobacco. Not surprising though when you follow the money as explicitly revealed by Robert N. Proctor. This book encompasses a great body of work, engaging and informative--all those damningly, inconvenient truths documented and footnoted. It is so skillfully and passionately written that it reads like a crime thriller with fascinating historical pictures. Read it and weep, or curse, or build legislating fires of doom on an industry that continues to stalk and prey.
July 30, 2012
Somewhat repetitive, and LONG, but very readable and full of quite appalling detail. What other industry is allowed to market a product that, when used as directed, will eventually kill half its users?
July 5, 2015
I found my way to this book by way of several positive references in the very good League of Denial by Mark Fainaru-Wada and Steve Fainaru https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1...
Golden Holocaust reminds me of League of Denial in that it can be seen as a book about a particular industry but it can also be viewed as a more general book on business ethics or unethical businesses. The writing can feel a bit academic once in a while but overall it’s a highly readable and often very funny book (in a biting, sarcastic way). I read the kindle version and highlighted many passages.
If I were to rate this book strictly on the reading experience (which is typically my primary standard) I would go somewhere between 3 and 4 stars. It’s a long book and not one I would pick up and stay with for the fun of it. I doubt this is a book that will be widely read because I’m not sure who the target audience is. Plaintiff attorneys and business school students are a definite niche. This isn’t the kind of book to get a smoker to quit and I just don’t see pre-smokers reading it.
The strength here is the content. The author thoroughly addresses the health risks without resorting to gory language or images and goes well beyond this to challenge the ethics of the cigarette industry, the media, the legal & marketing professions and academia. He calls out colleagues from Stanford (where the author is on the faculty) and particular faculty members at other elite universities (Duke, Harvard, Yale, UCLA) among others. The author makes powerful arguments and stands firmly behind them.
The author goes into great detail on the cigarette industry’s tactics to confuse and muddle the emerging science on the dangers of tobacco use; its own internal findings on addiction and health risks; its use of scientific funding to gain public favor and distort medical evidence against tobacco (most notably in court); the science of cigarettes (what’s in a cigarette; how nicotine and tar levels can be manipulated; the fraud of filters; what’s in smoke, etc.); its continuing use of marketing and lobbying to lure pre-smokers into the trap of smoking addiction. There are many other aspects to this book that make it a tough but worthwhile read.
Golden Holocaust reminds me of League of Denial in that it can be seen as a book about a particular industry but it can also be viewed as a more general book on business ethics or unethical businesses. The writing can feel a bit academic once in a while but overall it’s a highly readable and often very funny book (in a biting, sarcastic way). I read the kindle version and highlighted many passages.
If I were to rate this book strictly on the reading experience (which is typically my primary standard) I would go somewhere between 3 and 4 stars. It’s a long book and not one I would pick up and stay with for the fun of it. I doubt this is a book that will be widely read because I’m not sure who the target audience is. Plaintiff attorneys and business school students are a definite niche. This isn’t the kind of book to get a smoker to quit and I just don’t see pre-smokers reading it.
The strength here is the content. The author thoroughly addresses the health risks without resorting to gory language or images and goes well beyond this to challenge the ethics of the cigarette industry, the media, the legal & marketing professions and academia. He calls out colleagues from Stanford (where the author is on the faculty) and particular faculty members at other elite universities (Duke, Harvard, Yale, UCLA) among others. The author makes powerful arguments and stands firmly behind them.
The author goes into great detail on the cigarette industry’s tactics to confuse and muddle the emerging science on the dangers of tobacco use; its own internal findings on addiction and health risks; its use of scientific funding to gain public favor and distort medical evidence against tobacco (most notably in court); the science of cigarettes (what’s in a cigarette; how nicotine and tar levels can be manipulated; the fraud of filters; what’s in smoke, etc.); its continuing use of marketing and lobbying to lure pre-smokers into the trap of smoking addiction. There are many other aspects to this book that make it a tough but worthwhile read.
March 8, 2016
To say that this book is exhaustive would be an understatement. Proctor deals with every aspect of cigarette production, marketing and consumption in all its historical and medical context. Similarly he seeks to inform those reader who thought tobacco was old news and that they have already been defeated. Throughout the book Proctor uses the internal documents of tobacco companies to make an airtight argument for the negligence that the tobacco companies showed, and continue to show, in dealing with the ever increasing medical consequences of the products they sell. By exploring all their tactics, from actively trying to deny the medical evidence to purposefully seeking to confuse consumers about “safer” cigarette features, Proctor drives the point that the tobacco companies have been fighting the best medical advice of the last 50 years. Although I have never been an advocate of smoking I had thought that tobacco companies had already been dealt with and so I found this book fascinating because of the way in which it exposes the way in which these companies continue to undermine global health.
June 7, 2017
How institutionalised deception creates costs and suffering that can easily be avoided.
Whole scientific councils are kept alive to keep on saying that more studies are needed to justify offloading the health related costs and suffering to societies. Privatising profits and offloading costs to communities sounds to me like a free rider behaviour. Understanding that it was just in the last century that this practice arose using technology of the mechanisation is an eye opener. prof dr proctor has shed some light to an industry that prefers to linger in the shadow.
Whole scientific councils are kept alive to keep on saying that more studies are needed to justify offloading the health related costs and suffering to societies. Privatising profits and offloading costs to communities sounds to me like a free rider behaviour. Understanding that it was just in the last century that this practice arose using technology of the mechanisation is an eye opener. prof dr proctor has shed some light to an industry that prefers to linger in the shadow.
June 24, 2025
Some books don’t just inform — they slap you across the face, drag you through courtrooms, labs, and morgues, and then leave you gasping not from suspense, but from rage. Golden Holocaust is one such book. It’s not about tobacco as a habit — it’s about tobacco as a carefully orchestrated crime. Proctor, a science historian with the tenacity of a bloodhound, peels back layer after layer of deceit engineered by the cigarette industry — and what emerges isn’t a tragedy. It’s a calculated, decades-long act of global sabotage.
He calls out Big Tobacco not with slogans, but with 700+ pages of raw evidence — memos, marketing tactics, court documents, suppressed research. He shows how “mild” was a myth, how filters were a farce, and how addiction was always the plan. Reading this felt like sitting in the witness box while the entire 20th century coughed behind me.
For me, this book was personal. My maternal grandfather — a quiet doctor with a crumpled smile — died too young, after years of smoking Navy Cut.
Back then, no one told him it could kill. Golden Holocaust reads like the book he deserved. A reckoning. A scream of accountability.
It’s not easy to finish. It’s angry, relentless, heavy. But it's also essential — a kind of intellectual de-addiction therapy. The case for abolition isn’t just moral. It's medical, economic, historical, and — dare I say — spiritual. We cannot unburn the lungs, but we can stop fanning the flame.
He calls out Big Tobacco not with slogans, but with 700+ pages of raw evidence — memos, marketing tactics, court documents, suppressed research. He shows how “mild” was a myth, how filters were a farce, and how addiction was always the plan. Reading this felt like sitting in the witness box while the entire 20th century coughed behind me.
For me, this book was personal. My maternal grandfather — a quiet doctor with a crumpled smile — died too young, after years of smoking Navy Cut.
Back then, no one told him it could kill. Golden Holocaust reads like the book he deserved. A reckoning. A scream of accountability.
It’s not easy to finish. It’s angry, relentless, heavy. But it's also essential — a kind of intellectual de-addiction therapy. The case for abolition isn’t just moral. It's medical, economic, historical, and — dare I say — spiritual. We cannot unburn the lungs, but we can stop fanning the flame.
June 19, 2025
If you didn't already despise the tobacco industry, this book will change your mind. And if you DID already despise the tobacco industry, this book will make you want every tobacco company disbanded immediately. They're truly some of the worst human beings in world history.
February 13, 2017
Scandal of the Century for which most people / victims have not even heard. Or you did but you didn't understand it's importance. Must read!
September 13, 2024
Very good book to learn a lot about tobacco industry, however very technical and difficult to read
March 30, 2025
The parallels between the tobacco industry and the fossil fuel industry were insightful.
April 4, 2025
Super interesting material history of the cigarette. Proctor makes the controversial case for abolishing the tobacco industry. Very well written, but I think I liked the Brandt slightly better.
November 8, 2019
Difficult to really comprehend the evil in this world. Reading this changed my worldview in a statistically significant way.
February 9, 2017
Reading this book was a transformative experience. I wasn't even a smoker or anything. I probably had similar opinions to most non-smokers: I knew tobacco was bad for your health and that tobacco companies did some unethical stuff to reap bigger profits. I didn't think much else about it.
This book changed that. It walks you through the relatively innocuous origins of the tobacco plant and the evolution and development of this awful, addictive industry. His background as a historian is an asset because he presents such a comprehensive picture and provides excellent context while keeping the book very enjoyable to read. I was continually shocked as I read more about this industry. Proctor shows how this industry goes far beyond harming public health, but also undermined the entire field of scientific inquiry and progress.
When people ask me for a book that influenced me - I point to this book. I could say a lot more about how it's impacted me and what I think about this book's subject, but I'll let people read the book for themselves and see. I wish everyone could read it.
This book changed that. It walks you through the relatively innocuous origins of the tobacco plant and the evolution and development of this awful, addictive industry. His background as a historian is an asset because he presents such a comprehensive picture and provides excellent context while keeping the book very enjoyable to read. I was continually shocked as I read more about this industry. Proctor shows how this industry goes far beyond harming public health, but also undermined the entire field of scientific inquiry and progress.
When people ask me for a book that influenced me - I point to this book. I could say a lot more about how it's impacted me and what I think about this book's subject, but I'll let people read the book for themselves and see. I wish everyone could read it.
January 20, 2014
If I'm to rate this by how much it's effected my positively, I'd give it 5 stars. I'm rating it's effectiveness in general and offering advice: Mr. Proctor, please partner up with infographic designers, offer the text for free, and reduce the opinions (not because of validity, simply it's length).
With that said, it's super informative but won't work on current smokers in this form. And it's no jab at the form: I don't know why Rachel Carson's books, for example, were so much more effective.
With that said, it's super informative but won't work on current smokers in this form. And it's no jab at the form: I don't know why Rachel Carson's books, for example, were so much more effective.
March 22, 2013
Golden Holocaust was a very interesting doctoral thesis about the insidiousness of the tobacco industry and smoking, and makes a good case to outlaw, but it seems to jump around a lot, and also reference other (seemingly better) books on the subject. Over 100 pages is devoted to notes, and another 50+ devoted to tables and charts. I really think this was a doctoral thesis, and the university press published it.
February 6, 2014
The book contained really interesting and horrifying information. I think we've all heard about the tobacco industry and some of its practices, but this book introduces much more manipulation and deceit than I knew about. However, it was difficult to follow at times, repetitive, and too long. I found myself skimming through the last 150 pages or so. The story is quite shocking - too bad it wasn't a more engaging read.
October 4, 2016
100 millions de morts au 20è siècle, entre 5 et 10 fois pour le 21è... l'auteur fait un tour complet de cette industrie mortelle et de ses actions (santé, environnement, marketing, histoire, juridique) pour modifier la perception du grand public. Il présente enfin des solutions pour en sortir. "la cigarette est l'invention la plus meurtrière de l'histoire de l'humanité."
January 22, 2020
The definitive destruction of the Cigarette industry! Well worth the exhausting read, but I think a condensed version should be required reading in high schools around the entire world.
With a post-script about Vaping, maybe?
With a post-script about Vaping, maybe?
March 30, 2022
Brilliant.
February 2, 2017
A social history of tobacco industry. Well sourced, an socio historical investigation into the root of cigarette
Displaying 1 - 21 of 21 reviews