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The Cigarette: A Political History
Tobacco is the quintessential American product. From Jamestown to the Marlboro Man, the plant occupied the heart of the nation’s economy and expressed its enduring myths. But today smoking rates have declined and smokers are exiled from many public spaces. The story of tobacco’s fortunes may seem straightforward: science triumphed over our addictive habits and the cynical machinations of tobacco executives. Yet the reality is more complicated. Both the cigarette’s popularity and its eventual decline reflect a parallel course of shifting political priorities. The tobacco industry flourished with the help of the state, but it was the concerted efforts of citizen nonsmokers who organized to fight for their right to clean air that led to its undoing.
After the Great Depression, public officials and organized tobacco farmers worked together to ensure that the government’s regulatory muscle was more often deployed to promote tobacco than to protect the public from its harms. Even as evidence of the cigarette’s connection to cancer grew, medical experts could not convince officials to change their stance. What turned the tide, Sarah Milov argues, was a new kind of politics: a movement for nonsmokers’ rights. Activists and public-interest lawyers took to the courts, the streets, city councils, and boardrooms to argue for smoke-free workplaces and allied with scientists to lobby elected officials.
The Cigarette restores politics to its rightful place in the tale of tobacco’s rise and fall, illustrating America’s continuing battles over corporate influence, individual responsibility, collective choice, and the scope of governmental power.
After the Great Depression, public officials and organized tobacco farmers worked together to ensure that the government’s regulatory muscle was more often deployed to promote tobacco than to protect the public from its harms. Even as evidence of the cigarette’s connection to cancer grew, medical experts could not convince officials to change their stance. What turned the tide, Sarah Milov argues, was a new kind of politics: a movement for nonsmokers’ rights. Activists and public-interest lawyers took to the courts, the streets, city councils, and boardrooms to argue for smoke-free workplaces and allied with scientists to lobby elected officials.
The Cigarette restores politics to its rightful place in the tale of tobacco’s rise and fall, illustrating America’s continuing battles over corporate influence, individual responsibility, collective choice, and the scope of governmental power.
400 pages, Hardcover
First published October 2, 2019
71 people are currently reading
2373 people want to read
About the author
Sarah Milov
1 book9 followersSarah Milov is Assistant Professor of History at the University of Virginia. A former fellow of the Virginia Foundation for the Humanities, she has written on the tobacco industry, the rise of e-cigarettes, and the grassroots fight to battle climate change. Her research explores how organized interest groups and everyday Americans influence government policy.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 38 reviews
November 15, 2019
An excellent social, legal, regulatory, and political history of cigarette smoking, with a focus on the significance of the "non-smoker" as a discrete constituent and political actor. Very well done -- both tightly written and deeply researched.
December 30, 2020
Milov tackles an interesting topic, the 20th century development of tobacco price supports by the US government, in this academic book. Even though I was able to slog my way through it, I can't really recommend the writing style (or prooofreading) as an example of a page-turner. Milov makes her points ponderously, turning what could have been an enjoyable volume into something of a dry history. In her defense, this is probably what she intended to write, an academic treatise rather than a more accessible book.
November 19, 2019
Cigarettes were central to American political institutions. The United States government encouraged people to smoke.
Doubt is our product.
From the mid 1950's until 1998 the Tobacco Industry research Committee spent more than 300 million on "smoking and health research". This was a decades long conspiracy to publicly deny what they privately admitted: that cigarettes were deadly and addictive.
In 1967, seven of the top ten products advertised on television were cigarettes.
Government bureaucracies worked hand in hand with agricultural interest organization making the 20th century the cigarette century.
More people die every year from tobacco related diseases than murder, suicides, alcohol, automobile accidents and AIDS combined.
Doubt is our product.
From the mid 1950's until 1998 the Tobacco Industry research Committee spent more than 300 million on "smoking and health research". This was a decades long conspiracy to publicly deny what they privately admitted: that cigarettes were deadly and addictive.
In 1967, seven of the top ten products advertised on television were cigarettes.
Government bureaucracies worked hand in hand with agricultural interest organization making the 20th century the cigarette century.
More people die every year from tobacco related diseases than murder, suicides, alcohol, automobile accidents and AIDS combined.
January 26, 2020
I thought the first half of this book was really interesting but the second half seemed to be written by my most annoying sister. Please don’t tell her about “the civil rights movement for non smokers” family holidays are annoying enough already!!!
How did a book with such a beautiful cover turn into such a buzzkill?
How did a book with such a beautiful cover turn into such a buzzkill?
February 2, 2020
At a talk I went to by Henry Waxman over a decade ago in DC, he highlighted that cigarettes are the only legal product in the US that--used as intended--lead to sickness and death. And yet they've managed to have quite a prominent role in our culture for so long. Typically, that role is attributed to actions of big business--the misinformation campaigns, the peddling of junk science, the mass advertising, etc. However, focusing only on the relationship between the cigarette companies and the consumer leaves out a major player: the government (at all levels).
In "The Cigarette: A Political History," Sarah Milov traces the political forces at play in shaping the cigarette's role in American society and how the regulations that promoted or discouraged the industry fit within wider political and economic trends: the rise and fall of the New Deal agricultural framework that helped tobacco growers, the normalization of the cigarette in the postwar era as a quintessential part of consumer society), the varying competition or collaboration between tobacco growers and the cigarette industry, the rise of public interest law and the way that the non-smokers' rights movement picked up on the discourse of civil rights and--perhaps more closely--environmentalism, and the way in which the 1980s neoliberalism that helped so many corporations prosper worked against both the tobacco growers (that had defended on subsidies) and the cigarette companies (as the business case for non-smoking took hold in companies). The book looks at the smoke-filled rooms in which policies were made and corporate interests fought and the non-smoke-filled living rooms and classrooms where law students and ordinary citizens organized as a counter-pressure to cigarettes. And she looks at the strange bedfellows that the fights over smoking have produced (like when unions fought against workplace smoking restrictions out of a fear that it weakened their bargaining power). The fight over smoking took place at all levels -- national, state, local, and even workplace.
Smoking rates today are lower than they've been in a long time, although the use of e-cigarettes has been ticking up, especially the young. However, as Milov notes, it's important to understand any consumer product through the complex array of interests fighting for its widespread adoption and the role the government plays in establishing a framework for that. From trade policy to public health policy to agricultural policy to environmental policy, government actions have been shaping the fate of the cigarette every step of the way.
In "The Cigarette: A Political History," Sarah Milov traces the political forces at play in shaping the cigarette's role in American society and how the regulations that promoted or discouraged the industry fit within wider political and economic trends: the rise and fall of the New Deal agricultural framework that helped tobacco growers, the normalization of the cigarette in the postwar era as a quintessential part of consumer society), the varying competition or collaboration between tobacco growers and the cigarette industry, the rise of public interest law and the way that the non-smokers' rights movement picked up on the discourse of civil rights and--perhaps more closely--environmentalism, and the way in which the 1980s neoliberalism that helped so many corporations prosper worked against both the tobacco growers (that had defended on subsidies) and the cigarette companies (as the business case for non-smoking took hold in companies). The book looks at the smoke-filled rooms in which policies were made and corporate interests fought and the non-smoke-filled living rooms and classrooms where law students and ordinary citizens organized as a counter-pressure to cigarettes. And she looks at the strange bedfellows that the fights over smoking have produced (like when unions fought against workplace smoking restrictions out of a fear that it weakened their bargaining power). The fight over smoking took place at all levels -- national, state, local, and even workplace.
Smoking rates today are lower than they've been in a long time, although the use of e-cigarettes has been ticking up, especially the young. However, as Milov notes, it's important to understand any consumer product through the complex array of interests fighting for its widespread adoption and the role the government plays in establishing a framework for that. From trade policy to public health policy to agricultural policy to environmental policy, government actions have been shaping the fate of the cigarette every step of the way.
February 28, 2023
can't wait for "the juul: a political history"
February 21, 2020
Fresh off reading “The Empire of Cotton,” and having recently digested “Red Meat Republic,” I naturally reached for “The Cigarette.” This is a less ambitious book, with no pretenses of telling the history of capitalism from the angle of a single product. Instead, author Sarah Milov is content to actually tell the history of the cigarette in the US, from its invention in the late nineteenth century and its promotion by the American government, all the way through its demise in the late twentieth century.
The book starts in medias res, with the release of the Surgeon General’s Report on Smoking and Health in January of 1964, which marked the peak for the cigarette. This is but a flourish. The history is then mercifully told in chronological order.
First you find about how the American Tobacco Company came to dominate its field, establishing a trust as powerful as anything JP Morgan or the Rockefellers ever dreamt of, then (a bit) about the challenge cigarettes faced alongside alcohol from prohibitionists, then about how WWI saved the tobacco industry when cigarettes were included in soldiers’ rations and from there you’re ushered to the main topic and theme of this book, the relationship between the New Deal, the institutions of the New Deal and the cigarette industry: the Iron Triangle of 1. growers and manufacturers (the Tobacco Industry) who provided the votes and campaign contributions 2. Congress, which enacted the necessary legislation and 3. The Bureaucracy that actually made the rules.
You find out about the system that was built around the allotments, which became the same thing as a taxi medallion, government-organised price support cartel with its annual referendum, the creation of an international market for American flue-cured tobacco through heavy government intervention and the Marshall Plan. If acronyms of agencies is your thing, you’ve come to the right place. Same if you want an understanding of how politics and business were lumped together during the early days of the Cold War.
This dance does get brutally interrupted when cigarettes turn out to be deadly and the book morphs into the story of how it all slowly comes apart. From there you get to know Hill and Knowlton and Jesse Helms, John Banzhaf’s ASH, Clara Gouin’s GASP and nonsmokers’ rights, but also C. Everett Koop, an unlikely crusader against the cigarette.
And then, disappointingly, you fast-forward to the settlement with the States. It’s a bit weird, because the amounts concerned make a huge leap from 50 million to 200 billion and it’s clear you’ve missed many episodes. Read this on the plane, chiefly, but I’m pretty sure something happened here and the book was rushed to print.
Still, reasonably good and the jacket will never be topped. I always kept a bookmark sticking out the top.
The book starts in medias res, with the release of the Surgeon General’s Report on Smoking and Health in January of 1964, which marked the peak for the cigarette. This is but a flourish. The history is then mercifully told in chronological order.
First you find about how the American Tobacco Company came to dominate its field, establishing a trust as powerful as anything JP Morgan or the Rockefellers ever dreamt of, then (a bit) about the challenge cigarettes faced alongside alcohol from prohibitionists, then about how WWI saved the tobacco industry when cigarettes were included in soldiers’ rations and from there you’re ushered to the main topic and theme of this book, the relationship between the New Deal, the institutions of the New Deal and the cigarette industry: the Iron Triangle of 1. growers and manufacturers (the Tobacco Industry) who provided the votes and campaign contributions 2. Congress, which enacted the necessary legislation and 3. The Bureaucracy that actually made the rules.
You find out about the system that was built around the allotments, which became the same thing as a taxi medallion, government-organised price support cartel with its annual referendum, the creation of an international market for American flue-cured tobacco through heavy government intervention and the Marshall Plan. If acronyms of agencies is your thing, you’ve come to the right place. Same if you want an understanding of how politics and business were lumped together during the early days of the Cold War.
This dance does get brutally interrupted when cigarettes turn out to be deadly and the book morphs into the story of how it all slowly comes apart. From there you get to know Hill and Knowlton and Jesse Helms, John Banzhaf’s ASH, Clara Gouin’s GASP and nonsmokers’ rights, but also C. Everett Koop, an unlikely crusader against the cigarette.
And then, disappointingly, you fast-forward to the settlement with the States. It’s a bit weird, because the amounts concerned make a huge leap from 50 million to 200 billion and it’s clear you’ve missed many episodes. Read this on the plane, chiefly, but I’m pretty sure something happened here and the book was rushed to print.
Still, reasonably good and the jacket will never be topped. I always kept a bookmark sticking out the top.
August 25, 2020
3.5* Well-researched and thorough but, at times, the author's writing borders on the dull. The outset of the book discusses the key support system, the Agricultural Adjustment Act, that set price controls for tobacco farmers that lasted into the 21st century. Personally, details about the personalities that protected and attacked tobacco were woefully absent or else perfunctorily addressed. The conclusion of the book felt rushed. It is clear that the author did her homework and the book contains numerous fascinating statistics. However, the story itself let something to be desired.
January 14, 2020
I initially heard about this book because there was a bit of a scandal when it came out that a podcast had been based almost entirely on Milov's work, but she wasn't credited anywhere. Hopefully she ended up gaining some readers since the coverage of the omission probably reached more people than the original podcast would have.
Milov begins with a press conference announcing the surgeon general's warning, but then goes back to the 19th century, outlining the tobacco industry prior to the rise of large tobacco conglomerations and mass production of cigarettes, particularly the relationship between small growers and tobacco companies. She charts how the U.S. government's inclusion of tobacco and rolling papers during WWI and cigarettes during WII created a demand for cigarettes that hadn't existed before and how the market for American tobacco expanded internationally as well. She also traces the origin of the allotment system that began in the 1930s during the New Deal era as a means of stabilizing the price of tobacco by restricting supply and guaranteeing allotment holders a steady income. This policy was not ended UNTIL 2005 (!) when American growers were forced to compete with the free market, leading to the end of communities organized around small scale tobacco growing that had persisted into the 21st century. In the post-surgeon general's warning decades, she discusses the origins and battles of the anti-smoking movement. Her thesis is that the creation of the identity of "non-smoker" allowed people to mobilize and start insisting on smoke free public spaces and work spaces. The non-smoker movement, despite lobbying from the tobacco industry, was able to reframe the discussion even though scientific support for cancer from second-hand smoke would come out much later than the studies showing harm to smokers.
As someone born in 1989, it's interesting for me to hear about the ways that cigarette smoking was ubiquitous. I do remember when bars and bowling alleys were always smokey but it seems unthinkable today that people smoked in their offices or that tobacco companies tried to deny for so long the dangers of smoking and of second-hand smoke.
Milov's analysis is intersectional. She discusses how the allotment system was implemented in such a way to benefit white farmers, how women were leaders of the non-smoking movement, how the non-smoking movement in public spaces and workplaces often divided along gender lines, and how non-smoking ordinances and were favored by middle and upper class people and tended to be enforced against the poor and minorities. She also discusses how the non-smoker movement co-opted the language of the civil rights movement and other minority movements.
As a lawyer, I appreciated that she laid out the relevant legal issues instead of glossing over the substance of the legal obstacles and relevant precedent encountered by those who sought to change things through the courts and regulatory enforcement.
The tone of this book is very straightforward and unsentimental. I recently read And the Band Played On: Politics, People, and the AIDS Epidemic about the governmental, political, and social mobilization (or lack thereof) in response to the AIDS epidemic. The author of that book included a lot of stories about individuals with HIV/AIDS and their friends, family and significant others which was emotionally moving but also overwhelming at times. In contrast, although she acknowledges the health problems caused by tobacco throughout, Milov does not feature a sketch of any individual with lung cancer until well into the book--a TV actor featured on an anti-smoking commercial. That section was one of the most memorable to me and also brought into focus the importance of the contents of rest of the book. Maybe Milov didn't feel the need to spend much time putting a human face on the suffering caused by tobacco, or didn't feel like she needed to explain the humanity of its victims like Randy Shilts did.
Milov begins with a press conference announcing the surgeon general's warning, but then goes back to the 19th century, outlining the tobacco industry prior to the rise of large tobacco conglomerations and mass production of cigarettes, particularly the relationship between small growers and tobacco companies. She charts how the U.S. government's inclusion of tobacco and rolling papers during WWI and cigarettes during WII created a demand for cigarettes that hadn't existed before and how the market for American tobacco expanded internationally as well. She also traces the origin of the allotment system that began in the 1930s during the New Deal era as a means of stabilizing the price of tobacco by restricting supply and guaranteeing allotment holders a steady income. This policy was not ended UNTIL 2005 (!) when American growers were forced to compete with the free market, leading to the end of communities organized around small scale tobacco growing that had persisted into the 21st century. In the post-surgeon general's warning decades, she discusses the origins and battles of the anti-smoking movement. Her thesis is that the creation of the identity of "non-smoker" allowed people to mobilize and start insisting on smoke free public spaces and work spaces. The non-smoker movement, despite lobbying from the tobacco industry, was able to reframe the discussion even though scientific support for cancer from second-hand smoke would come out much later than the studies showing harm to smokers.
As someone born in 1989, it's interesting for me to hear about the ways that cigarette smoking was ubiquitous. I do remember when bars and bowling alleys were always smokey but it seems unthinkable today that people smoked in their offices or that tobacco companies tried to deny for so long the dangers of smoking and of second-hand smoke.
Milov's analysis is intersectional. She discusses how the allotment system was implemented in such a way to benefit white farmers, how women were leaders of the non-smoking movement, how the non-smoking movement in public spaces and workplaces often divided along gender lines, and how non-smoking ordinances and were favored by middle and upper class people and tended to be enforced against the poor and minorities. She also discusses how the non-smoker movement co-opted the language of the civil rights movement and other minority movements.
As a lawyer, I appreciated that she laid out the relevant legal issues instead of glossing over the substance of the legal obstacles and relevant precedent encountered by those who sought to change things through the courts and regulatory enforcement.
The tone of this book is very straightforward and unsentimental. I recently read And the Band Played On: Politics, People, and the AIDS Epidemic about the governmental, political, and social mobilization (or lack thereof) in response to the AIDS epidemic. The author of that book included a lot of stories about individuals with HIV/AIDS and their friends, family and significant others which was emotionally moving but also overwhelming at times. In contrast, although she acknowledges the health problems caused by tobacco throughout, Milov does not feature a sketch of any individual with lung cancer until well into the book--a TV actor featured on an anti-smoking commercial. That section was one of the most memorable to me and also brought into focus the importance of the contents of rest of the book. Maybe Milov didn't feel the need to spend much time putting a human face on the suffering caused by tobacco, or didn't feel like she needed to explain the humanity of its victims like Randy Shilts did.
January 29, 2021
I’m not interested in smoking, cigarettes, or tobacco in general, but this book drew me in immediately. It’s well written and well organized. I learned a lot about how the giant industry was created and about the women behind the movement that brought it down. The Donna Schempp story was particularly fascinating.
Milov smoothly teaches the political environment of the era without dragging the reader through the historical details. It’s a very readable book. Thanks for writing it!
Milov smoothly teaches the political environment of the era without dragging the reader through the historical details. It’s a very readable book. Thanks for writing it!
November 30, 2019
While I'm glad I read this book and learned a lot, the author's writing style was difficult for me to read and I found it to be repetitive. I struggled to get through the book.
June 24, 2025
Sarah Milov’s The Cigarette isn’t just about smoke — it’s about power, paper trails, protest, and the people who refused to choke in silence. It’s a sharp, clear-eyed account of how the cigarette wasn’t simply marketed — it was institutionalized, built into the very lungs of American policy, patriotism, and profit.
But where most tobacco histories zoom in on corporate malice, Milov zooms out — and shows us the citizens, activists, and bureaucrats who fought back. She flips the narrative: this isn’t the story of Big Tobacco’s rise, it’s the story of how it was finally challenged. For me, though, this book is drenched in something deeper.
It was gifted to me by my beloved Sir — a man of intellect, compassion, and enough blunt force to pierce my defences — who handed it to me with just five words: “Pritam, quit smoking.” I held the book like a confession wrapped in a hardcover.
Every page read like a conversation I wasn’t ready for. And somewhere between tobacco subsidies and public health movements, I realized this book wasn’t trying to convince me — it was simply holding up a mirror. And there, in the smoke, I saw a hand reaching out — his hand. The kind that doesn’t lecture, but lifts.
But where most tobacco histories zoom in on corporate malice, Milov zooms out — and shows us the citizens, activists, and bureaucrats who fought back. She flips the narrative: this isn’t the story of Big Tobacco’s rise, it’s the story of how it was finally challenged. For me, though, this book is drenched in something deeper.
It was gifted to me by my beloved Sir — a man of intellect, compassion, and enough blunt force to pierce my defences — who handed it to me with just five words: “Pritam, quit smoking.” I held the book like a confession wrapped in a hardcover.
Every page read like a conversation I wasn’t ready for. And somewhere between tobacco subsidies and public health movements, I realized this book wasn’t trying to convince me — it was simply holding up a mirror. And there, in the smoke, I saw a hand reaching out — his hand. The kind that doesn’t lecture, but lifts.
May 8, 2025
The title of this book should have been "The Cigarette: A Political History Related ONLY to Modern America From the Point of View of A Feminist Shrew".
I regret the hours I wasted listening to this book.
Boring doesn't even come close. You would think the author would go back further in history to give an unbiased view of tobacco throughout the world, for a more complete analysis of what a cigarette is and how it effected human civilization over the course of time, but no, its just her rambling for 14 hours about the most minute of random details, focusing only on America and mainly over the last 100 years or so. Such a limited scope. Oh, and half the time it's just her annoyingly wording out and repeating the same acronyms over and over and over.
I regret the hours I wasted listening to this book.
Boring doesn't even come close. You would think the author would go back further in history to give an unbiased view of tobacco throughout the world, for a more complete analysis of what a cigarette is and how it effected human civilization over the course of time, but no, its just her rambling for 14 hours about the most minute of random details, focusing only on America and mainly over the last 100 years or so. Such a limited scope. Oh, and half the time it's just her annoyingly wording out and repeating the same acronyms over and over and over.
October 24, 2025
This book is very thorough in it's research. It is exactly as it advertises itself: it is a political history a tobacco and cigarettes in the United States up until the early 2000s. It's extremely detailed and accounts for changes and shifts in farming, economy, medical research, political lobbying and donations, political activism, and more.
But if you're looking for a non-fiction book that is going to grip you and keep you interested or something that is going to make the knowledge you're gaining feel transformative, this may not be the book for you. This is a very dry read and while the writing isn't bad, it lacks the passion or concise punch many other political histories have.
In short, it's worth the read, but really only if you're truly interested in the subject matter.
But if you're looking for a non-fiction book that is going to grip you and keep you interested or something that is going to make the knowledge you're gaining feel transformative, this may not be the book for you. This is a very dry read and while the writing isn't bad, it lacks the passion or concise punch many other political histories have.
In short, it's worth the read, but really only if you're truly interested in the subject matter.
September 1, 2022
The content was very thorough, but the presentation of the material was very difficult to get through. I was also disappointed that more of the propaganda and advertising aspect weren't emphasized. I understand that the book clearly says "political history," but if propaganda and pandering aren't part of politics, then I don't know what politics are anymore. I was interested in this book after reading the summary for "Smoke 'em if you got 'em," a book I'd like to read now, since this book didn't scratch my itch. Unfortunately that book is more rare and quite expensive, so I probably won't ever get around to it.
August 20, 2025
This book was incredible. It was difficult to read in the aspect of it was so much information that sometimes I felt like my head was going to explode. I find that to be a good thing. I love the way it was written. It gave both the characters involved in tobacco and painted all sides of the story but also didn't cater to tobacco as a whole. It called out the terrible things that the industry has done to gain more wealth and how it used its money to influence the government and get their hands in their pockets. I highly recommend this book if you want to experience the microcosm of how corrupt our government can be when private interests dictate legislation.
March 17, 2021
A very well-researched and comprehensive read about the rise and then subsequent decline of the cigarette. It is organized chronologically with emphasis placed on the role of the government within the tobacco industry, as well as the work behind non-smoker activism. Economic, political, legal and social aspects are all given some degree of coverage. Stylistically, this book is academic – an endless stream of facts and acronyms. While accessible, it’s not what I would call, approachable. My attention waned from time to time.
April 14, 2025
Enjoyed this book more than I thought I would - I found it to be a little weighed down by legal jargon, and sometimes I would have to reconstruct the timelines due to somewhat jarring time skips forward and backwards. However, I found it to be incredibly nuanced and thoughtful about all elements of tobacco, “from seed to smoke” as she says.
January 10, 2020
Spends too much time on things that are rather boring and too little time on the past 30 years (basically just 8-10 pages of the conclusion)
Also could’ve been better organized. 7 chapters is not at all my preference for 300 page history books
Also could’ve been better organized. 7 chapters is not at all my preference for 300 page history books
April 19, 2020
Finally! It took a while to get through this book, and even though I found it fascinating at times, there were too many political groups to keep track of. Which is probably why it took until 2003 to ban smoking in NY restaurants and bars.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
July 4, 2022
A really interesting history of the tobacco industry with a particular focus on the AAA and the impact on growers during the depression. Makes interesting case that modern anti smoking movement cut out growers and empowered corporations even as domestic market for tobacco shrunk.
January 15, 2023
Very intriguing part of American history. Difficult read, takes a lot of time to keep the government entities, lobbyist groups, and all the legislator. Enjoyed learning about the story of the rise of cigarettes in the country.
May 7, 2023
The author, a History professor at UVA, paints a pretty damning portrait of the cigarette industry and its actions from the beginning of the cigarette business in the US from the early 1900's up to the recent present.
March 4, 2025
There is a lot of great information in this but it’s explained in a pretty stereotypical nonfiction-y way. More dry than it feels like it needs to be. The first half (ish) was better than the back half, but the conclusion does round things up pretty well. The cover is five stars.
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December 13, 2019338.4767 M661 2019
January 8, 2020
I kinda miss being forced to shower after an evening out at a bar. Those were fine days.
But seriously, the cover alone on this book should make you want to read it.
But seriously, the cover alone on this book should make you want to read it.
January 30, 2020
Interesting, but rather dry...
February 2, 2020
Well detailed and interesting. Although I doubt this book would appeal much to the average read, it was interesting to someone who works in health care advocacy.
May 10, 2020
A lively and interesting history that helped me make sense of all the tobacco interests I was exposed to living in North Carolina.
May 27, 2020
the rights of non-smokers section was interesting. everything else was a bit of a blur.
Displaying 1 - 30 of 38 reviews