The Rise, Fall, and Deadly Persistance of the Product That Defined America
by llan M. Brandt
The industrial manufacture of cigarettes began in the late nineteenth century, but it wasn't until the invention of the modern consumer, advertising campaign-pioneered by cigarette brands-that the product really took off at the turn of the century. The cigarette became an indispensable accessory of glamour and sex appeal: from Marlene Dietrich to Humphrey Bogart to Anne Bancroft, we have imagined stars with cigarettes in their mouths, and imitated them.
The cigarette-the ultimate icon of our consumer culture-serves as a vehicle for historian Allan Brandt to explore critical aspects of American life. From agriculture to big business, from medicine to politics, The Cigarette Century shows how smoking came to be so deeply implicated in our culture, science, policy, and law. In this magisterial book, Brandt demonstrates how the cigarette reflects the most powerful debates of our time about risk, responsibility, and human health. The Cigarette Century reaches across many disciplines to form a broad and compelling synthesis, showing how one humble (and largely useless) product came to play such a dominant role in our lives and deaths.
"Brandt seldom lets the story drag; he has a fine sense of what detail to use and when to stop using it." - Washington Post.
"[A] highly readable, exhaustively researched book" - PW.
"Grist for an anti-smoking campaigner's mill, and testimony to the banality of evil." - Kirkus.
This information about The Cigarette Century was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
We should have a great fewer disputes in the world if words were taken for what they are
Click Here to find out who said this, as well as discovering other famous literary quotes!
Your guide toexceptional books
BookBrowse seeks out and recommends the best in contemporary fiction and nonfiction—books that not only engage and entertain but also deepen our understanding of ourselves and the world around us.