The Smoking Life

Rating:
Summary: A book with both historical insight and humor.
Review: The Smoking life is a pleasure to read. It is more of a coffee-table gift book than anything else but I cannot remember learning and laughing as much from any other such book that I have seen. The book made me laugh but it is not fluff. Ilene Barth must have done an extraordinary amount of research on the history of tobacco use. She found everything from Sixteenth Century woodcuts to quotations and stills from our favorite classic movies. She has found a lot of wonderful art. All of these illustrate what is the extremely important social history of tobacco--a history that I had never considered. I don't smoke and I must say that I find the habit a bit foul, but I think anyone who is following the media stories about tobacco ought to read The Smoking Life. After all, we do need to put today's big story in to the context of our history and Ms. Barth shows the big role that smoking has had in that history. But most of all, we need a sense of humor about this all and The Smoking Life gives us just that.

Rating:
Summary: A book with both historical insight and humor.
Review: The Smoking life is a pleasure to read. It is more of a coffee-table gift book than anything else but I cannot remember learning and laughing as much from any other such book that I have seen. The book made me laugh but it is not fluff. Ilene Barth must have done an extraordinary amount of research on the history of tobacco use. She found everything from Sixteenth Century woodcuts to quotations and stills from our favorite classic movies. She has found a lot of wonderful art. All of these illustrate what is the extremely important social history of tobacco--a history that I had never considered. I don't smoke and I must say that I find the habit a bit foul, but I think anyone who is following the media stories about tobacco ought to read The Smoking Life. After all, we do need to put today's big story in to the context of our history and Ms. Barth shows the big role that smoking has had in that history. But most of all, we need a sense of humor about this all and The Smoking Life gives us just that.