The Cigarette Century by Allan Brandt (2007, Hardcover)

The industrial manufacture of cigarettes began in the 1870s, but it wasn't until after World War I, with the invention of the modern consumer advertising campaign-pioneered, of course, by cigarette brands-that the product really took off. For six decades the cigarette was 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. No consumer product was advertised more heavily or entered the American consciousness more deeply.

As historian Allan Brandt shows in this magisterial book, the cigarette was the defining product of the twentieth century, from its role in developing environmental science and epidemiology to its remaking of American civil law to its role in the invention of modern public relations and advertising. The Cigarette Century reaches across disciplines to show how one humble (and largely useless) product came to play such a dominant role in our lives. And it shows that while the cigarette is on the decline in the U.S., it has a profitable future in the rising economies of the Third World.

Industry Reviews
"Allan Brandt, a Harvard professor, has written a history of the cigarette in America....It is a remarkable story, clearly told, astonishingly well-documented...and with a transparent moral motif."
(03/17/2007)