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The Cigarette Century: The Rise, Fall, and Deadly Persistence of the Product That Defined America.

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Allan M. Brandt Basic Books www. basicbooks, com 600 pp., $36

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Allan Brandt wears a lot of different hats. He is a medical doctor and a professor of medical history at Harvard, and he served as an expert in United States v. Philip Morris USA, Inc., a RICO case in which the federal government alleged that several cigarette manufacturers had defrauded the American public about the health risks of smoking. (477 F. Supp. 2d 191 (D.D.C. 2007).)

Brandt's book, The Cigarette Century: The Rise, Fag, and Deadly Persistence of the Product That Defined America, follows the cigarette's ascension from a "little-used product" to a position of "cultural dominance" in the United States. Brandt shows how cigarette companies manipulated corruptible "experts," ineffectual legislators, ingenious marketers, and the public by exploiting the American paradigms of individualism and serf-reliance. He also reports on the World Heath Organization's fledgling attempts to impose international regulations on tobacco. In doing so, Brandt offers up the best service a historian can provide: a history not to repeat.

Brandt relies on previous books by other historians, archival...

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