Ashes to Ashes: America's Hundred-Year Cigarette War, the Public Health, and the Unabashed Triumph of Philip MorrisKnopf Doubleday Publishing Group, 2010/05/26 - 832 ページ PULITZER PRIZE WINNER • No book before this one has rendered the story of cigarettes—mankind's most common self-destructive instrument and its most profitable consumer product—with such sweep and enlivening detail. "A great battleship of a book—formidable, majestic.”—The New York Times Book Review Here for the first time, in a story full of the complexities and contradictions of human nature, all the strands of the historical process—financial, social, psychological, medical, political, and legal—are woven together in a riveting narrative. The key characters are the top corporate executives, public health investigators, and antismoking activists who have clashed ever more stridently as Americans debate whether smoking should be closely regulated as a major health menace. We see tobacco spread rapidly from its aboriginal sources in the New World 500 years ago, as it becomes increasingly viewed by some as sinful and some as alluring, and by government as a windfall source of tax revenue. With the arrival of the cigarette in the late-nineteenth century, smoking changes from a luxury and occasional pastime to an everyday—to some, indispensable—habit, aided markedly by the exuberance of the tobacco huskers. This free-enterprise success saga grows shadowed, from the middle of this century, as science begins to understand the cigarette's toxicity. Ironically the more detailed and persuasive the findings by medical investigators, the more cigarette makers prosper by seeming to modify their product with filters and reduced dosages of tar and nicotine. We see the tobacco manufacturers come under intensifying assault as a rogue industry for knowingly and callously plying their hazardous wares while insisting that the health charges against them (a) remain unproven, and (b) are universally understood, so smokers indulge at their own risk. Among the eye-opening disclosures here: outrageous pseudo-scientific claims made for cigarettes throughout the '30s and '40s, and the story of how the tobacco industry and the National Cancer Institute spent millions to develop a "safer" cigarette that was never brought to market. Dealing with an emotional subject that has generated more heat than light, this book is a dispassionate tour de force that examines the nature of the companies' culpability, the complicity of society as a whole, and the shaky moral ground claimed by smokers who are now demanding recompense. |
目次
3 | |
30 | |
It Takes the Hair Right Off Your Bean | 54 |
The Golden Age of Malarkey | 80 |
Shall We Just Have a Cigarette on It? | 112 |
The Filter Tip and Other Placebos | 141 |
The Anguish of the Russian Count | 183 |
Grand Inquisitors | 221 |
The Heights of Arrogance | 447 |
The Calling of Philip Morris | 490 |
Of Dragonslayers and Pond Scum | 536 |
Chow Lines | 580 |
Melancholy Rose | 639 |
Smooth Characters | 678 |
Blowing Smoke | 723 |
Afterword to the Vintage Edition | 764 |
Marlboro Mirage | 263 |
ThreeTon Dog on the Prowl | 298 |
Stroking the Sows Ear | 349 |
Let There Be Light | 387 |
Breeding a OneFanged Rattler | 412 |
A Note on Sources and Acknowledgments | 768 |
772 | |
Notes | 777 |
795 | |
他の版 - すべて表示
多く使われている語句
addiction agency American Cancer Society American Tobacco antismoking arette bacco brand Brown & Williamson Califano Camel campaign carcinogenic cause cents chairman chief ciga cigarette advertising cigarette business cigarette companies cigarette makers cigarette smoking Cipollone claim committee company's Congress consumer corporate Cullman director disease Duke Edell effect effort evidence executive federal filter flavor George Weissman habit hazardous health charges industry's investigators issue lawyers leaf less liability Liggett Lucky Lucky Strike lung cancer Marlboro Maxwell million Morris's nicotine yields nonsmokers operations pack package percent peril Pertschuk Philip Morris PM's political president profits public-health rette Reynolds risk RJR's Ross Johnson scientific scientists selling Seven-Up smok smoking and health Surgeon General's taste tion tobacco companies tobacco industry Tobacco Institute tobacco smoke Wakeham warning label Weissman Wynder York