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Ashes to Ashes: America's Hundred-Year Cigarette War, the Public Health, and the Unabashed Triumph of Philip Morris
Ashes to Ashes is a monumental history of the American tobacco industry's ironicsuccess in developing the cigarette, modern society's most widespreadinstrument of self-destruction, into the nation's most profitableconsumer product. Starting with its energized, work-obsessed royalfamilies, the Dukes and the Reynoldses, and their embattled successorslike the eccentric autocrat George Washington Hill and the feisty Joseph F. Cullman, the book vividly portrays the cigarrette makers generationsof entrepreneurial geniuses. Their problematic achievement was based on cunning business strategies and marketing dazzle, deft political powerplays, and a relentless, often devious attack on antismoking forces inscience, public health, and government. Enabling the whole process tounfold was the weirdly symbiotic relationship of an industry geared atany cost to sell, sell, sell cigarettes, and an American publichabituated to ignore all health warnings and buy, buy, buy.At the center of this epic is thecontinuing drama of the Philip Morris Company and the crafty men at itshelm. The youngest, once smallest entry in the business, it remained an underdog until the marketing brainstorm that transformed the Marlborobrand from little more than a woman's fashion accessory to the ultimateemblem of hairy-chested machismo (and made it America's - and theworld's - #1 smoke). Remarkably, the company's global prosperitymounted steadily even as the news about cigarettes and health grew moredire by the year.Caught up in the Philip Morris story is the whole sweep of America's cigarette history, from the glory days oframpant hucksterism - when smokers would "walk a mile for a Camel,"Winston tasted "good like a cigarette should," and most of the nationcould decipher "L.S. / M.F.T" - to the bombshell 1964 Surgeon General'sReport that definitively indicted smoking as a killer, to the age of the massive mergers that spawned RJR Nabisco and Philip Morris-KraftGeneral Foods.Here we learn how the leaf that was the New World's most passionately devoured gift to the Old grew intohumankind's most dangerous consumer product, employing a vast ruralcorps of laborers, fattening tax revenues, and propagating a ring offiercely competitive corporate superpowers; how tobacco's peerlesspublic-relations spinners applied their techniques to becloud theoverwhelming evidence of the cigarette's lethal and addictive nature;and finally, how the besieged industry and the aroused public-healthforces nationwide collided over whether to outlaw the butt habitaltogether or bring it into ever more withering social disdain and under ever tighter government control.
832 pages, Kindle Edition
First published July 29, 1997
63 people are currently reading
1843 people want to read
About the author
Richard Kluger
28 books54 followersRichard Kluger is an American social historian and novelist who, after working as a New York journalist and publishing executive, turned in mid-career to writing books that have won wide critical acclaim. His two best known works are Simple Justice, considered the definitive account of the U.S. Supreme Court’s 1954 landmark decision outlawing racially segregated public schools, and Ashes to Ashes, a critical history of the cigarette industry and its lethal toll on smokers, which won the Pulitzer Prize for general nonfiction.
Born in Paterson, N.J., Kluger grew up in Manhattan and graduated from Princeton University, where he chaired The Daily Princetonian. As a young journalist, he wrote and edited for The Wall Street Journal, the pre-Murdoch New York Post and Forbes magazine, and became the last literary editor of the New York Herald Tribune and its literary supplement, Book Week. When the Tribune folded, Kluger entered the book industry, rising to executive editor of Simon and Schuster, editor-in-chief of Atheneum, and publisher of Charterhouse Books.
Moved by the cultural upheavals sweeping across the U.S., Kluger left publishing and devoted five years to writing Simple Justice, which The Nation hailed as “a monumental accomplishment” and the Harvard Law Review termed “a major contribution to our understanding of the Supreme Court.” It was a finalist for the National Book Award, as was Kluger’s second nonfiction work, The Paper: The Life and Death of the New York Herald Tribune. It was followed by Ashes to Ashes and three other well received works of history,
Seizing Destiny , about the relentless expansion of America’s territorial boundaries; The Bitter Waters of Medicine Creek, about a tragic clash between white settlers and tribal natives in territorial Washington, and Indelible Ink, about publisher John Peter Zenger and the origins of press freedom in America.
Of his seven novels, the most widely read were Members of the Tribe, warmly praised by the Chicago Tribune said, and The Sheriff of Nottingham, which Time called “richly imagined and beautifully written.” He also co-authored two novels with his wife Phyllis, a fiber artist and herself the author of two books on needlework design. The Klugers live in Berkeley.
Born in Paterson, N.J., Kluger grew up in Manhattan and graduated from Princeton University, where he chaired The Daily Princetonian. As a young journalist, he wrote and edited for The Wall Street Journal, the pre-Murdoch New York Post and Forbes magazine, and became the last literary editor of the New York Herald Tribune and its literary supplement, Book Week. When the Tribune folded, Kluger entered the book industry, rising to executive editor of Simon and Schuster, editor-in-chief of Atheneum, and publisher of Charterhouse Books.
Moved by the cultural upheavals sweeping across the U.S., Kluger left publishing and devoted five years to writing Simple Justice, which The Nation hailed as “a monumental accomplishment” and the Harvard Law Review termed “a major contribution to our understanding of the Supreme Court.” It was a finalist for the National Book Award, as was Kluger’s second nonfiction work, The Paper: The Life and Death of the New York Herald Tribune. It was followed by Ashes to Ashes and three other well received works of history,
Seizing Destiny , about the relentless expansion of America’s territorial boundaries; The Bitter Waters of Medicine Creek, about a tragic clash between white settlers and tribal natives in territorial Washington, and Indelible Ink, about publisher John Peter Zenger and the origins of press freedom in America.
Of his seven novels, the most widely read were Members of the Tribe, warmly praised by the Chicago Tribune said, and The Sheriff of Nottingham, which Time called “richly imagined and beautifully written.” He also co-authored two novels with his wife Phyllis, a fiber artist and herself the author of two books on needlework design. The Klugers live in Berkeley.
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August 4, 2018
This book is a beast. At over 700 pages and dense as hell, it's not a quick read, but it stands as a highly revealing history of an industry that was (once) economically unstoppable, politically powerful, and undeniably harmful.
The book follows two main strands of inquiry over the course of a century. First, the importance of marketing in making and breaking the fortunes of the major industry players like Phillip Morris and RJ Reynolds. The detail here is truly exhaustive and I admit that some of the twists and turns of market analysis could have been condensed. Second, the slow but undeniable accumulation of scientific evidence linking cigarettes to lung cancer and other diseases. The two threads are brought together once the scientific consensus sparks a political and legal struggle to rein in tobacco's influence and protect the public health.
The larger political question lurking here is also fascinating: what should we do about large, powerful corporations that harm the public welfare? It's not an original observation to draw parallels between cigarettes and climate change, but with each chapter I was struck by just how similar the two issues, almost on a micro-level. For anyone who has followed currents of climate change denial over the past few decades, the bullshit is all found here too: the bad faith and outright lies, the doctored studies, cautious in-house lawyers and slick PR messaging.
Similar too are some of the authentically tricky public policy questions about individual choice versus public goods, about how political power flows from economic might, and how the complex interactions of presidents, congress, courts, citizens and activists eventually create social change.
The book follows two main strands of inquiry over the course of a century. First, the importance of marketing in making and breaking the fortunes of the major industry players like Phillip Morris and RJ Reynolds. The detail here is truly exhaustive and I admit that some of the twists and turns of market analysis could have been condensed. Second, the slow but undeniable accumulation of scientific evidence linking cigarettes to lung cancer and other diseases. The two threads are brought together once the scientific consensus sparks a political and legal struggle to rein in tobacco's influence and protect the public health.
The larger political question lurking here is also fascinating: what should we do about large, powerful corporations that harm the public welfare? It's not an original observation to draw parallels between cigarettes and climate change, but with each chapter I was struck by just how similar the two issues, almost on a micro-level. For anyone who has followed currents of climate change denial over the past few decades, the bullshit is all found here too: the bad faith and outright lies, the doctored studies, cautious in-house lawyers and slick PR messaging.
Similar too are some of the authentically tricky public policy questions about individual choice versus public goods, about how political power flows from economic might, and how the complex interactions of presidents, congress, courts, citizens and activists eventually create social change.
November 30, 2025
"Gross!" That's what I think whenever I see someone smoking. I detest the smell of cigarettes, and consider them to be cancer sticks. If I'm walking near someone who is smoking, I attempt to alter my path so as to avoid them. Or, more importantly, the cloud of swirling cigarette smoke that somehow seems to make a beeline for me if I get anywhere near. But thankfully, that is not nearly as common of an occurrence as it used to be. Richard Kluger's exhaustive study of the cigarette industry in America was published in 1997, at a time when - despite increasing restrictions - smoking was much more prevalent than it is now.
Kluger traces the rapid emergence of the cigarette back to the Civil War era, and how tobacco was an important crop in several mid-Atlantic states as well as Kentucky. Soldiers smoked it during the Civil War. After the war, the tobacco industry sprouted up quickly, thanks in large part to the industrial revolution. The rise of the factory allowed tobacco to start being processed in large quantities. This was long before the advent of filter-tip cigarettes (which the industry opaquely tried to say were safer to smoke than unfiltered cigarettes) and before there was any scientific evidence of the deadly effects that smoking caused.
Kluger starts by focusing on three main tobacco companies: American Tobacco Company, Philip Morris, and RJ Reynolds. At first I thought American Tobacco would be a prominent player in the story, because its founder, James Buchanan (Buck) Duke was one of the main players in the explosion of smoking as necessity for millions of people. Duke had his headquarters in New York City and helped market the first really popular brand: Lucky Strike. Duke grew his company into a behemoth, owning other, smaller companies in the process (Lorillard, Liggett & Myers). He came across as the John D. Rockefeller of tobacco. But American Tobacco fell victim to the trust-busting environment of Theodore Roosevelt in the first decade of the 1900s, and Duke was forced to parcel off parts of his company. Much later, after WWII, sales began to decline despite American Tobacco introducing the Pall Mall, which had no filter and was briefly popular. The narrative leaves Duke behind, and American Tobacco all but disappears from the book, remaining a decided minor player in the cigarette industry.
Instead of American Tobacco, Kluger focuses on the two tobacco titans: Philip Morris and RJ Reynolds. Of the two, PM gets the majority of the page space throughout the book. I was surprised at this, as Philip Morris was behind RJ Reynolds in market share all the way up to the mid 80s. It is not that Kluger didn't devote adequate time to Reynolds, but the nucleus of the book seemed to have Philip Morris much closer to it than Reynolds. Perhaps Kluger had more contacts at PM, or maybe he found it a more interesting and dynamic company to write about (he takes pains to point out that RJ Reynolds was a stodgy company and quite insular).
At any rate, Philip Morris had arguably the most popular cigarette over time: Marlboro. Kluger details how, when PM first introduced Marlboro in the 1920s, it did so as a cigarette marketed towards women, not men. This was during the flapper era, when women were beginning to enjoy more freedom than they had previously. But it did not sell well at all. Decades later, in the 1960s, when Philip Morris was still striving to catch RJ Reynolds, the Marlboro was reimagined as a masculine cigarette. An aggressive ad company - Marlboro Country - was launched, and the company flooded the TV airwaves with commercials of macho-looking cowboys galloping around on their horses, Marlboros dangling from their lips. The packaging was also changed, now a dark red package that became synonymous with Marlboro. Sales exploded. Marlboro soon became the main opponent of the flagship cigarette for Reynolds - Winston (Reynolds is based in Winston-Salem, NC). In fact, the final cigarette ad on TV (a federal ban took place at the end of New Year's Day 1971) was a Marlboro commercial depicting a cowboy riding off into the sunset, lit Marlboro his companion.
Meanwhile, RJ Reynolds from the time of its founder Dick Reynolds ran a much less flashy operation (and racist as well, reflecting the area where it based its operations in). As the longtime industry leader thanks mainly to its popular Camel brand, Reynolds focused more on its distribution and retail operation, making sure it got in good with store managers. Reynolds managed to get prime shelf space for itself and hold onto that space, squeezing Philip Morris and the smaller players to lower shelves. Camel began to lose selling power though following WWII, as companies began to introduce filters on some cigarettes. Reynolds, becoming somewhat complacent up at the top, did not move to counter the aggressiveness of Philip Morris, and a long, slow decline in market share began.
But were the filter-tipped cigarettes any safer, or less unhealthy? The growing number of people suffering and later dying from lung cancer resulted in scientific studies starting up. Laboratory experiments were performed on animals (mice, beagles, and others) and researchers began to probe more deeply into the smoking habits of people, how many cigarettes they smoked per day, what type of cigarette, did they inhale deeply, did the smoke the cigarette down to the butt, and so forth. These studies took time, especially the ones tracking the health of smokers as it takes years for the effects to really begin to show up.
Of course, the tobacco industry pooh-poohed each and every study that came out, claiming that any evidence was anecdotal, incomplete, or biased. The industry counter-attacked by having its own paid scientists and even its own propaganda organ, the Tobacco Institute, produce their own studies supposedly showing completely different results. The began a decades-long battle between the industry and science, with smokers caught in the middle. Each study produced could be - and were - nit-picked to death, with the tobacco scientists hunting for any flaw, no matter how minute. One thing that hampered those who were attempting to link smoking with lung cancer is that there were so many other factors at play that could skew or affect their studies: the overall physical condition of their subjects, their age, how long they had smoked, what exactly they smoked (studies showed that pipe and cigar smokers also had elevated chances of contracting lung cancer, but at levels below that of cigarette smokers), where they lived (was there a nearby chemical plant that polluted the air?), and where they worked (did they breathe in noxious fumes or air from something else, such as asbestos?).
The tobacco industry isn't the only bad guy here. Kluger spends a lot of time showing how the repeated inaction, and indeed hostility towards any kind of regulations of the tobacco industry, by Congress was a prime reason why smoking was so ubiquitous for so long. There were many influential Congressmen who were from tobacco-producing states, and they were not about to let a major industry in their own backyard become neutralized by the federal government. The Presidents didn't help either. Some were smokers or former smokers themselves (FDR, Dwight Eisenhower, Lyndon Johnson). Some gave the item a low priority, if at all (John Kennedy, Richard Nixon, Jimmy Carter). Others were anti-regulatory (Ronald Reagan, George Bush). The first actual anti-smoking President was Bill Clinton. The combination of Executive indifference and Congressional inaction/hostility led to very little being done. Looking back, it's somewhat surprising that Congress did pass a national TV ban on cigarette advertising. And the occasional Surgeon General, especially C. Everett Koop, or Health, Education and Welfare Secretary (Joseph Califano) would use their pulpit to voice alarm over what smoking did to people. But for the most part, any smoking restrictions were left up to the individual states and anti-smoking advocates.
Throughout the 70s and 80s, states did begin to restrict smoking. This would occur in fits and starts, with many measures initially being blocked thanks to heavy lobbying by the tobacco industry at various state legislatures. The companies also tried to turn anti-smokers into authoritarians - attempting to control what smokers can do and where they can smoke. As time passed, slowly the anti-smokers gained the upper hand. I think that some of this had to due with health, as the numbers of smokers who became ill and died from lung cancer or cardiovascular disease continued to rise. Some of this had to do with the increasing worry about the dangers of second-hand smoke (I can still remember my grandmother - a heavy smoker - sitting on her couch, smoking, and me watching the smoke curl and swirl in the sunlight as it floated towards me). And maybe most of all it had to do with annoyance. Non-smokers were getting tired of having to put up with smokers and their habit, tired of smelling and breathing something repulsive to them, tired of their clothes stinking of smoke even though they themselves did not smoke, tired of a nice meal being spoiled by cigarette smoke surrounding them.
There is so much more to this book that I have not even touched. Kluger covers the proliferation of lawsuits that started to appear in the 1980s, with varying results for both plaintiffs and the tobacco companies. Kluger also goes into detail about many of the major personalities at Philip Morris and RJ Reynolds, especially their respective chairmen and CEOs. He also examines their growing international operations, stretching out like tentacles on an octopus. Eventually, Philip Morris got involved in pretty much every corner of the globe. And Kluger also discusses at length the non-tobacco takeovers and mergers made by the two giants. Philip Morris acquired Miller Brewing Company, then took over Seven-Up (which ended up being a massive loss for them), General Foods, and finally the food giant Kraft. Reynolds took over Del Monte and Nabisco. While interesting, I thought that Kluger spent too much time on these types of corporate maneuvers, and it made a long book even longer as delving into the food and beverage acquisitions took away from the focus on tobacco and cigarettes.
Finally, one disappointment is that there were no photos at all. A picture here and there of what a package of Lucky Strike or Camel looked like would have been nice, even though of course you can easily look one up online. But when this book was published in 1997, that was not as easily done. In the end, this is a very good book that is worth reading if you have the patience for it (767 pages of small print does get daunting at times). I would like to note that, since the book's publication, think about how much has changed concerning people being allowed to smoke in public places. When was the last time you went to a restaurant that had a smoking section? It's been at least a decade for me. And even then I remember being surprised to see it as it was more the exception than the rule by then. You don't see cigarette vending machines anymore. Nor are people allowed to smoke in offices or at places such as bowling alleys. You can even drive by a bingo parlor now and not see a haze of smoke floating above everyone! While I was reading this book, I kept thinking about my great uncle Pat, who died of emphysema back in the 90s. I remember him telling me that he used to smoke unfiltered Camels and had gotten hooked on them during the war, and that he sure was sorry he had done so as they ruined his health and made his final years quite painful (of course, he also poured salt in his beer, so I doubt that helped). There were a lot of uncle Pats out there. Far too many.
Grade: A-
Kluger traces the rapid emergence of the cigarette back to the Civil War era, and how tobacco was an important crop in several mid-Atlantic states as well as Kentucky. Soldiers smoked it during the Civil War. After the war, the tobacco industry sprouted up quickly, thanks in large part to the industrial revolution. The rise of the factory allowed tobacco to start being processed in large quantities. This was long before the advent of filter-tip cigarettes (which the industry opaquely tried to say were safer to smoke than unfiltered cigarettes) and before there was any scientific evidence of the deadly effects that smoking caused.
Kluger starts by focusing on three main tobacco companies: American Tobacco Company, Philip Morris, and RJ Reynolds. At first I thought American Tobacco would be a prominent player in the story, because its founder, James Buchanan (Buck) Duke was one of the main players in the explosion of smoking as necessity for millions of people. Duke had his headquarters in New York City and helped market the first really popular brand: Lucky Strike. Duke grew his company into a behemoth, owning other, smaller companies in the process (Lorillard, Liggett & Myers). He came across as the John D. Rockefeller of tobacco. But American Tobacco fell victim to the trust-busting environment of Theodore Roosevelt in the first decade of the 1900s, and Duke was forced to parcel off parts of his company. Much later, after WWII, sales began to decline despite American Tobacco introducing the Pall Mall, which had no filter and was briefly popular. The narrative leaves Duke behind, and American Tobacco all but disappears from the book, remaining a decided minor player in the cigarette industry.
Instead of American Tobacco, Kluger focuses on the two tobacco titans: Philip Morris and RJ Reynolds. Of the two, PM gets the majority of the page space throughout the book. I was surprised at this, as Philip Morris was behind RJ Reynolds in market share all the way up to the mid 80s. It is not that Kluger didn't devote adequate time to Reynolds, but the nucleus of the book seemed to have Philip Morris much closer to it than Reynolds. Perhaps Kluger had more contacts at PM, or maybe he found it a more interesting and dynamic company to write about (he takes pains to point out that RJ Reynolds was a stodgy company and quite insular).
At any rate, Philip Morris had arguably the most popular cigarette over time: Marlboro. Kluger details how, when PM first introduced Marlboro in the 1920s, it did so as a cigarette marketed towards women, not men. This was during the flapper era, when women were beginning to enjoy more freedom than they had previously. But it did not sell well at all. Decades later, in the 1960s, when Philip Morris was still striving to catch RJ Reynolds, the Marlboro was reimagined as a masculine cigarette. An aggressive ad company - Marlboro Country - was launched, and the company flooded the TV airwaves with commercials of macho-looking cowboys galloping around on their horses, Marlboros dangling from their lips. The packaging was also changed, now a dark red package that became synonymous with Marlboro. Sales exploded. Marlboro soon became the main opponent of the flagship cigarette for Reynolds - Winston (Reynolds is based in Winston-Salem, NC). In fact, the final cigarette ad on TV (a federal ban took place at the end of New Year's Day 1971) was a Marlboro commercial depicting a cowboy riding off into the sunset, lit Marlboro his companion.
Meanwhile, RJ Reynolds from the time of its founder Dick Reynolds ran a much less flashy operation (and racist as well, reflecting the area where it based its operations in). As the longtime industry leader thanks mainly to its popular Camel brand, Reynolds focused more on its distribution and retail operation, making sure it got in good with store managers. Reynolds managed to get prime shelf space for itself and hold onto that space, squeezing Philip Morris and the smaller players to lower shelves. Camel began to lose selling power though following WWII, as companies began to introduce filters on some cigarettes. Reynolds, becoming somewhat complacent up at the top, did not move to counter the aggressiveness of Philip Morris, and a long, slow decline in market share began.
But were the filter-tipped cigarettes any safer, or less unhealthy? The growing number of people suffering and later dying from lung cancer resulted in scientific studies starting up. Laboratory experiments were performed on animals (mice, beagles, and others) and researchers began to probe more deeply into the smoking habits of people, how many cigarettes they smoked per day, what type of cigarette, did they inhale deeply, did the smoke the cigarette down to the butt, and so forth. These studies took time, especially the ones tracking the health of smokers as it takes years for the effects to really begin to show up.
Of course, the tobacco industry pooh-poohed each and every study that came out, claiming that any evidence was anecdotal, incomplete, or biased. The industry counter-attacked by having its own paid scientists and even its own propaganda organ, the Tobacco Institute, produce their own studies supposedly showing completely different results. The began a decades-long battle between the industry and science, with smokers caught in the middle. Each study produced could be - and were - nit-picked to death, with the tobacco scientists hunting for any flaw, no matter how minute. One thing that hampered those who were attempting to link smoking with lung cancer is that there were so many other factors at play that could skew or affect their studies: the overall physical condition of their subjects, their age, how long they had smoked, what exactly they smoked (studies showed that pipe and cigar smokers also had elevated chances of contracting lung cancer, but at levels below that of cigarette smokers), where they lived (was there a nearby chemical plant that polluted the air?), and where they worked (did they breathe in noxious fumes or air from something else, such as asbestos?).
The tobacco industry isn't the only bad guy here. Kluger spends a lot of time showing how the repeated inaction, and indeed hostility towards any kind of regulations of the tobacco industry, by Congress was a prime reason why smoking was so ubiquitous for so long. There were many influential Congressmen who were from tobacco-producing states, and they were not about to let a major industry in their own backyard become neutralized by the federal government. The Presidents didn't help either. Some were smokers or former smokers themselves (FDR, Dwight Eisenhower, Lyndon Johnson). Some gave the item a low priority, if at all (John Kennedy, Richard Nixon, Jimmy Carter). Others were anti-regulatory (Ronald Reagan, George Bush). The first actual anti-smoking President was Bill Clinton. The combination of Executive indifference and Congressional inaction/hostility led to very little being done. Looking back, it's somewhat surprising that Congress did pass a national TV ban on cigarette advertising. And the occasional Surgeon General, especially C. Everett Koop, or Health, Education and Welfare Secretary (Joseph Califano) would use their pulpit to voice alarm over what smoking did to people. But for the most part, any smoking restrictions were left up to the individual states and anti-smoking advocates.
Throughout the 70s and 80s, states did begin to restrict smoking. This would occur in fits and starts, with many measures initially being blocked thanks to heavy lobbying by the tobacco industry at various state legislatures. The companies also tried to turn anti-smokers into authoritarians - attempting to control what smokers can do and where they can smoke. As time passed, slowly the anti-smokers gained the upper hand. I think that some of this had to due with health, as the numbers of smokers who became ill and died from lung cancer or cardiovascular disease continued to rise. Some of this had to do with the increasing worry about the dangers of second-hand smoke (I can still remember my grandmother - a heavy smoker - sitting on her couch, smoking, and me watching the smoke curl and swirl in the sunlight as it floated towards me). And maybe most of all it had to do with annoyance. Non-smokers were getting tired of having to put up with smokers and their habit, tired of smelling and breathing something repulsive to them, tired of their clothes stinking of smoke even though they themselves did not smoke, tired of a nice meal being spoiled by cigarette smoke surrounding them.
There is so much more to this book that I have not even touched. Kluger covers the proliferation of lawsuits that started to appear in the 1980s, with varying results for both plaintiffs and the tobacco companies. Kluger also goes into detail about many of the major personalities at Philip Morris and RJ Reynolds, especially their respective chairmen and CEOs. He also examines their growing international operations, stretching out like tentacles on an octopus. Eventually, Philip Morris got involved in pretty much every corner of the globe. And Kluger also discusses at length the non-tobacco takeovers and mergers made by the two giants. Philip Morris acquired Miller Brewing Company, then took over Seven-Up (which ended up being a massive loss for them), General Foods, and finally the food giant Kraft. Reynolds took over Del Monte and Nabisco. While interesting, I thought that Kluger spent too much time on these types of corporate maneuvers, and it made a long book even longer as delving into the food and beverage acquisitions took away from the focus on tobacco and cigarettes.
Finally, one disappointment is that there were no photos at all. A picture here and there of what a package of Lucky Strike or Camel looked like would have been nice, even though of course you can easily look one up online. But when this book was published in 1997, that was not as easily done. In the end, this is a very good book that is worth reading if you have the patience for it (767 pages of small print does get daunting at times). I would like to note that, since the book's publication, think about how much has changed concerning people being allowed to smoke in public places. When was the last time you went to a restaurant that had a smoking section? It's been at least a decade for me. And even then I remember being surprised to see it as it was more the exception than the rule by then. You don't see cigarette vending machines anymore. Nor are people allowed to smoke in offices or at places such as bowling alleys. You can even drive by a bingo parlor now and not see a haze of smoke floating above everyone! While I was reading this book, I kept thinking about my great uncle Pat, who died of emphysema back in the 90s. I remember him telling me that he used to smoke unfiltered Camels and had gotten hooked on them during the war, and that he sure was sorry he had done so as they ruined his health and made his final years quite painful (of course, he also poured salt in his beer, so I doubt that helped). There were a lot of uncle Pats out there. Far too many.
Grade: A-
September 15, 2016
Phew! It took some getting though but I finally managed to finish the book. This book is definitely not a page turner, but to be fair to the author, the subject does not lend itself to being a page turner. Having said that, I have read other books on similar topics that are far more captivating.
Moving on the content, this is probably as comprehensive a book on the tobacco industry as a lay person might want. The book has three broad themes; one of the evolution of the industry from chew tobacco to cigars and the explosive growth after cigarettes were introduced, the other around the competition between the various tobacco companies and their struggle for market share and ebb and tide of success and failure that each went through, and finally about the anti-smoking cause and the usual collusion between special interests and politics that allowed an industry that is very obviously bad for human health to stay outside of most regulatory oversight.
Good coverage of the subject but pick it up only if you are game for a tough slog!
Moving on the content, this is probably as comprehensive a book on the tobacco industry as a lay person might want. The book has three broad themes; one of the evolution of the industry from chew tobacco to cigars and the explosive growth after cigarettes were introduced, the other around the competition between the various tobacco companies and their struggle for market share and ebb and tide of success and failure that each went through, and finally about the anti-smoking cause and the usual collusion between special interests and politics that allowed an industry that is very obviously bad for human health to stay outside of most regulatory oversight.
Good coverage of the subject but pick it up only if you are game for a tough slog!
March 9, 2021
This is probably the best book I ddn't finish.
I really liked it and learned a lot, BUT struggled to read it. The book probably deserves 5 stars, but I personally couldn't get into it.
I really liked it and learned a lot, BUT struggled to read it. The book probably deserves 5 stars, but I personally couldn't get into it.
November 3, 2018
The author takes you to the depths of the smoking industry and their relentless effort to increase their profits and disclaim all the health and moral hazards of smoking. At over 700 pages and dense as hell, it's not a quick read, but it stands as a highly revealing history of an industry that was (once) economically unstoppable, politically powerful, and undeniably harmful.
September 11, 2009
For the most part, a fascinating history of tobacco and tobacco companies that answers many questions you may have had about cigarette branding & advertising. Just who was Philip Morris anyway? Later, it becomes a polemic as the author gleefully chronicles the lawsuit era.
January 1, 2012
I wish I could have finished this book. It was just so dry and way too in depth. I picked this up wanting to get a better understanding of just how shady the tobacco industry is. I didn't need it to explain how the body metabolizes nicotine or the myriad of other chemical reactions that takes place and while an overview of the history of is to be expected I didn't really need to know it's history in detail from the time of the fricken bronze age. By the time I got to the meat and potatoes of the industries dastardly deeds I was so sick of reading this book I simply couldn't go on. I appreciate the immense research the author clearly did to paint the full picture but for me it was overkill.
Also the text was so small it was the size of the text used to write poems on grains of rice. I felt overwhelmed just looking at the font.
Also the text was so small it was the size of the text used to write poems on grains of rice. I felt overwhelmed just looking at the font.
March 29, 2016
Very interesting and thought provoking read about real issues and institutions within our society. Extensive history of the cigarette industry in America and the health claims and other struggles that the industry was dealing with up to the publication of the book. Amazing job done tying together the legal, social, psychological, health and business relations to cigarettes throughout the book and still telling a comprehensive story. However at times there seemed to be too much detail and the book was rather dense and difficult to read. Overall still informative and eye opening in to the history of an industry and practice that I knew very little about but is a large part of many people's lives and societies all around the world.
December 26, 2018
I feel like I’ve been reading this book all year. An incredibly dense history, more focused on the 1960s and onwards, about the cigarette industry. Not a fan of smoking in the first place, this book revealed the lengths to which cigarette manufacturers went to to market their wares at each turn of public sentiment and scientific publication. You almost stand in awe of their twisty-turny logic (and also a lot of disgust. It also opened my eyes to all the different industries these behemoth companies were tapped into (Miller Lite, Kraft Mac and Cheese, and Marlboros from the same company?!). While interesting in content, it was a SLOW read, and at times a little dry.
June 13, 2024
B- months. Months and months of reading. Picking this up, putting it down. Reading 20 pages at a time— sometimes 50 pages at a time. But, it’s finished. And, man. It was spectacular.
Richly detailed and so carefully researched, this treatise on the origin of cigarettes and their protracted downfall is massive but so very important. The author takes his time, weighing out the “hundred years war” of tobacco, its lies, its purveyors, its tricksters, its hucksters, and malcontents.
I decided to read all of the non-fiction Pulitzer winners (from 1990 onward) for a read just like this. Intimidating and unwieldy but so valuable and important.
Richly detailed and so carefully researched, this treatise on the origin of cigarettes and their protracted downfall is massive but so very important. The author takes his time, weighing out the “hundred years war” of tobacco, its lies, its purveyors, its tricksters, its hucksters, and malcontents.
I decided to read all of the non-fiction Pulitzer winners (from 1990 onward) for a read just like this. Intimidating and unwieldy but so valuable and important.
May 10, 2010
Fascinating. It was a bit slow to start, but by the end (warning: it's almost 900 pages of pretty dense history) I had a much better grasp of the history, science, and politics of the tobacco industry - both in America and internationally - than I had ever had before. He writes with various people, companies, and interest groups as protagonists, like a sprawling Latin American family epic, and is remarkably even-handed at the same time as he recognizes the indisputable medical/moral aspects of smoking. THE book to read on the subject, if you only read one.
February 18, 2023
I started this book years ago, put it down, then picked it up again and decided to finish it. It’s a great look at the tobacco industry and it’s quite objective. My only complaint was it really really got into the weeds into the scientific part of smoking and it’s impact on the body which i’m sure i’ll never remember. But there is alot to remember and i love the way this author writes. Its LONG with small print so buckle down.
June 15, 2020
Exhaustively researched, which makes it occasionally exhausting to read. Kluger doesn't help matters with his love of extremely long sentences containing sub-clauses within sub-clauses. Overall, it's a solid history but a good editor could have cut about 400 pages without losing much of substance to the typical reader.
March 28, 2008
For those who is (or was) working in cigarette/tobacco company, this book is deserved to read. A pullitzer-price winner, a bit dense and tiring with a lot of fact, but anyway an eye-opener of this industry.
July 8, 2018
Very detailed history of the smoking industry
The author takes you to the depths of the smoking industry and their relentless effort to increase their profits and disclaim all the health and moral hazards of smoking.
The author takes you to the depths of the smoking industry and their relentless effort to increase their profits and disclaim all the health and moral hazards of smoking.
April 27, 2018
If you're still naïve enough to believe the government and big business have your personal interest at heart, read this book.
June 24, 2025
Ashes to Ashes is not just a book — it’s a mountain. And every chapter is another horrifying fossil dug from the sediment of America’s longest, slowest mass homicide. Richard Kluger doesn’t waste time with small puffs of insight — he goes full inferno. This Pulitzer Prize–winning monster chronicles a century of corporate deception, social engineering, and the unrelenting chemical seduction of a global public, orchestrated in boardrooms and sweetened with menthol.
What makes this book so monumental is not just its size (seriously, it's got the heft of a legal case file and the tension of a courtroom thriller) — it's the clarity with which Kluger dissects how Philip Morris didn’t just sell cigarettes, but sold freedom, sex, rebellion, and belonging.
And they did it knowing it killed.
And they won.
I picked this up after reading Golden Holocaust and Thank You for Smoking, and reading Kluger felt like the grand finale of the Tobacco Trinity. Except here, the jokes are gone. This is history carved in marble, and every statistic feels like a gravestone. Still, Kluger isn’t preachy — he’s a storyteller with a scalpel, and he lays bare how a nation’s health was auctioned off for quarterly profits and marketing awards.
For me, there was something eerily personal about it — the smell of old relatives’ shirts, the yellowed fingers of bus stop strangers, and the memory of that first awkward cough outside a school gate. Tobacco was everywhere. Kluger makes sure we never forget how it got there — and who paid the price.
What makes this book so monumental is not just its size (seriously, it's got the heft of a legal case file and the tension of a courtroom thriller) — it's the clarity with which Kluger dissects how Philip Morris didn’t just sell cigarettes, but sold freedom, sex, rebellion, and belonging.
And they did it knowing it killed.
And they won.
I picked this up after reading Golden Holocaust and Thank You for Smoking, and reading Kluger felt like the grand finale of the Tobacco Trinity. Except here, the jokes are gone. This is history carved in marble, and every statistic feels like a gravestone. Still, Kluger isn’t preachy — he’s a storyteller with a scalpel, and he lays bare how a nation’s health was auctioned off for quarterly profits and marketing awards.
For me, there was something eerily personal about it — the smell of old relatives’ shirts, the yellowed fingers of bus stop strangers, and the memory of that first awkward cough outside a school gate. Tobacco was everywhere. Kluger makes sure we never forget how it got there — and who paid the price.
August 15, 2025
This book takes a look into the history of the cultivation of tobacco in the United States. It explains the relationship between Indigenous populations and tobacco, as well as the introduction to the European populations during the Columbian Exchange and colonization that followed. Learning how different varieties of tobacco were created and cultivated was interesting, as I had no idea there were so many varieties and their uses varied. I originally got this book because I was on a "let's read about all kinds of companies" binge, but this book actually proved to be a valuable reference for me in an assignment for school.
April 29, 2022
This book is like watching a snail race. There is so much detail that it never really moves along. It’s incredibly thorough but at the sake of being interesting. Unless you have a ton of time on your hands and unless minutia piques your curiosity, I don’t recommend.
May 23, 2023
Hard-driving thesis of the dangers of smoking up against the difficulty of fighting Big Tobacco.
December 27, 2023
I’m not proud to say this but I gave up on this after 300 (out of 800) pages… it is comprehensively researched and meticulous history of the tobacco industry but just WAY too detailed for me.
February 6, 2020
Was assigned a portion of this book for a class on Causal Inference, but as a smoker, the story itself intrigued me so I gave the whole book a go. Though it was riveting, it was not a page-turned in any sense: though it was loaded with interesting information, it was very difficult to read.
October 22, 2014
This books outlines the rise of the tobacco industry in America, focussing primarily on the health concerns that arose primarily after WWII, reaching its peak only in the 80/ 90s. The book puts forth a case that the industry did know about the potential health concerns through its own research, but chose to consistently discontinue/ suppress research which could more conclusively prove causality between smoking and lung cancer/ heart disease. /the book also highlights the current concerns with Environmental Tobacco Smoke (ETS), better known as second hand smoke, and how research does not find it as dangerous as portrayed. The book also outlines the rise (and fall) of the tobacco giants, and how they sought to diversify their business.
From a strictly clinical point of view, the tobacco body corporates did what would have been expected of any entity: defend the product from which they had made their billions. Inconvertible proof was going to be a long time coming, and to give up a fortune because of a growing lobby would have been idealistic. Further, the tobacco barons actually worked the American political system to their advantage, establishing a strong lobby group that has held off a fragmented anti smoking movement for decades.
All in all, a nice overview of the tobacco industry and the challenges it faces. It's informative, but dry for the most part. The long history also means there are many personalities and phases , which can be a challenge if you read this in intermittent spurts like I did.
From a strictly clinical point of view, the tobacco body corporates did what would have been expected of any entity: defend the product from which they had made their billions. Inconvertible proof was going to be a long time coming, and to give up a fortune because of a growing lobby would have been idealistic. Further, the tobacco barons actually worked the American political system to their advantage, establishing a strong lobby group that has held off a fragmented anti smoking movement for decades.
All in all, a nice overview of the tobacco industry and the challenges it faces. It's informative, but dry for the most part. The long history also means there are many personalities and phases , which can be a challenge if you read this in intermittent spurts like I did.
January 29, 2012
Fascinating and easy read about the history of the cigarette in the world and especially in the US. Some interesting information:
FDA rules not applied to cigarettes as they were not a "food" or a "beverage" (even though they contain lots of additives)
"new" type of tobacco leaf cured using charcoal, much deadlier because it could be inhaled into the lungs. Called "bright" leaf tobacco.
Buck Duke (after whom Duke U is named) started a huge monopoly, which was disassembled by the Sherman anti-trust legislation under Teddy Roosevelt Administration.
RJ Reynolds was part of the bigger trust, but when it was disbanded, he was able to pursue "Camel."
At first, cigars and snuff were popular but with advent of WWI, impossible to smoke quickly in trenches, so cigarettes became more popular. Also felt that they "calmed" a person down (even though they raise heart rate and bp).
p. 4--growing plants is very time-consuming and expensive --one of the hardest plants to grow--seedlings incubate for several months until read 5 - 8 ", then transplanted one at a time, 6,000 - 10,0000 per acre. Planted in little mounds to allow for drainage. Intensive, stopping, painstaking labor. Then, drying process.
Finally, gave up reading this book as I wasn't as engaged after I got the "gist" of what the author was saying. Glad I read part of it, but couldn't make it through the whole thing.
FDA rules not applied to cigarettes as they were not a "food" or a "beverage" (even though they contain lots of additives)
"new" type of tobacco leaf cured using charcoal, much deadlier because it could be inhaled into the lungs. Called "bright" leaf tobacco.
Buck Duke (after whom Duke U is named) started a huge monopoly, which was disassembled by the Sherman anti-trust legislation under Teddy Roosevelt Administration.
RJ Reynolds was part of the bigger trust, but when it was disbanded, he was able to pursue "Camel."
At first, cigars and snuff were popular but with advent of WWI, impossible to smoke quickly in trenches, so cigarettes became more popular. Also felt that they "calmed" a person down (even though they raise heart rate and bp).
p. 4--growing plants is very time-consuming and expensive --one of the hardest plants to grow--seedlings incubate for several months until read 5 - 8 ", then transplanted one at a time, 6,000 - 10,0000 per acre. Planted in little mounds to allow for drainage. Intensive, stopping, painstaking labor. Then, drying process.
Finally, gave up reading this book as I wasn't as engaged after I got the "gist" of what the author was saying. Glad I read part of it, but couldn't make it through the whole thing.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
July 2, 2025
Fascinating history of tobacco consumption from the first adoption of this native American tradition by the British colonists—who then imported it back to the British island—all the way to early 2000 when the cigarettes giants were forced to pay billions in compensation for the victims of smoking. This is also a penalty for hiding the fact and misguided the public on the strong link between smoking, nicotine and cancer. In between, the industry was also seen as pioneer in advancing new sales, distribution and marketing techniques. The triumph of Philip Morris for instance, is a result of the clever swift in giving Marlboro a new face: from originally marketed as women's cigarette, the company rebranded it into a more masculine persona through Marlboro Man campaign, the longest and most successful marketing campaign to date.
March 17, 2013
Incredible depiction of how the tobacco industry manipulated policymakers and the public to distort the debate about the health risks and regulation of tobacco. The lessons the industry learned have been adopted by the NRA and the food industry, with the former closely replicating the biggest successes of cigarette manufacturers (preemption and libertarian rhetoric) and the latter realizing they need to figure out a strategy to reign in the damage of sugar and fat content before the government takes the authority away from them. I did not read the whole thing--I was primarily interested in recent events and focused on the second half of the book--but it seems to be a very comprehensive portrait of the business and policy machinery that sowed the tobacco fields of America.
November 11, 2016
nonfiction (history/business/politics/science). These rat bastards strike me as
alarmingly similar
to the businesses and industries who continue to claim global warming is not a real, proven thing, bribing Congress to loosen environmental sanctions so that they can continue to amass millions/billions in profits at the cost of public health and well-being. And for everyone's sake, I hope that marijuana is as safe as its users believe it to be (they really haven't done enough studies to know for sure at this point) so that we don't find ourselves in the same situation with THAT multi-billion-dollar industry 50 years from now (you know, in addition to all the climate problems). I would sigh now, but I think I'm too worried.
May 11, 2012
Didn't think it was possible for me to think less of cigarette manufacturers but this book made that happen. To know what they have known for so long and to continue to peddle cigarettes in the way that they have is just incredible. This exhausting story of the history of the cigarette industry is fascinating in the way that the industry has manipulated so many in the quest of dollars. I use examples from this book in my economics courses--you can't make up better examples of predatory pricing and manipulative advertising than what the tobacco industry has done over the years. Students, both smokers and non-smokers alike, love the examples from this industry.
February 1, 2017
Kluger has written an encyclopedia documenting nearly every mover-and-shaker in the history of Phillip Morris and RJ Reynolds, as well as legions of anti-smoking activists trying to hold them accountable. The book starts in workmanlike prose, but gains momentum as Kluger examines the 1960s onward. Interesting details--the mechanization of cigarette rolling, the reasoning behind the classic ad jingles.... But you will feel frustration as you learn of the industry's slippery lies and their seeming immunity to all consequences.
August 21, 2007
V. interesting, Pulitzer winning treatise on this most pernicious industry. And, while the author does manage to successfully imbue the characters with enough, well, character to keep readers engaged I found the pace a bit dulling. This is another "by read I mean didn't finish" (see also: Bury The Chains); however I may get back to this one...
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