Book currents.(two books)(Brief Article)

Legend has it that in the late nineteen-twenties the president of American Tobacco was sitting in his car at Fifth Avenue and 110th Street when he noticed nearby an overweight woman chewing gum and then, in a passing taxicab, a slim, short-skirted young woman smoking a cigarette. It marked a milestone in the industry's long history of marketing tobacco to women. Tara Parker-Pope relates this and other anecdotes in CIGARETTES: ANATOMY OF AN INDUSTRY FROM SEED TO SMOKE (New Press), which details the many ways tobacco has been touted as a quality-of-life enhancer: as a symbol of autonomy for women, for example, or as protection against the plague, in 1665. Most ads between 1938 and 1983 focussed on healthy living; in the nineteen-fifties the introduction of a filter for Liggett's L&M brand was accompanied by the slogan "Just what the doctor ordered."

In SMOKE GETS IN YOUR EYES ...