Customer Reviews

Tobacco: A Cultural History of How an Exotic Plant Seduced Civilization

5 star:		(9)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Mostly historic, this book is excellent from many perspectives. The history of Tobacco is discussed from it's origins in Central America, all the way to the production of cigarettes in modern times with facinating bits of well written history at every page. Although written well enough to be scholarly, it's very easy to read and fun to learn from. I enjoy cigars, and of my tobacco smoking friends who have shared this book, they all read it cover to cover as well.

Gately's history of tobacco's effect on humanity is an off-beat but well-written look at a plant that has generated a good share of controversy over the years. While more entertaining and better organized than the similarly-themed book Salt by Mark Kurlansky, Gately's knowledge of history beyond that of tobacco is sometimes deficient and he often comes off as an apologist for the tobacco industry.

Gately starts at the beginning, with the Indians who discovered tobacco and consumed it in a number of fashions. When Europeans were introduced, they quickly became addicted and tobacco became one of the most valuable crops around. Although Gately goes all the way to the present day and the decline of tobacco (at least in the U.S.), and he does discuss some of the health problems related to smoking, there is a sense he is downplaying the dangers of the substance and the industry's complicity in avoiding reform.

Despite his biases, Gately does present most of the facts and even if you don't agree with his views, he is still a good writer and he covers this topic with a brisk and often humorous style. This is a good read for those interested in history from the point-of-view of a substance instead a person or a nation.

About half-way through this book, I started saying, "Nah, that can't be true." Maybe it was, maybe it wasn't, but I couldn't shake the feeling.

At first, Gately's Tobacco is simply a history, objectively told with an amusing tone. The prose is fast-paced, well-researched and, as far as it goes, honest. Despite Gately's well-reasoned and informative arguments, I have my doubts about the extent of tobacco's influence on historical/political situations, but then, it's difficult to know how seriously Gately takes such arguments himself.

But Gately's emphasis of tobacco's role in civilization (Western civilization particularly) gains a certain edginess the closer the book gets to the modern age. Gately is quite honest about the medical/addictive aspect of tobacco smoke. His defense of tobacco rests mostly on the intelligent and defendable grounds of libertarianism. But there is still something unsettling about such a defense in the face of Gately's honest description of the tobacco companies' approach to teen smokers. Although he isn't defending the tobacco companies, the reader almost begins to wish he would. Gately's c'est la vie shrug of the shoulders seems a tad Machiavellian, even by libertarian standards.

The trouble seems to be that Gately is too honest for his own good. A less honest man would defend tobacco without reference to the unsavory elements of its history and nature. Gately begins on an engagingly cavalier "Boy, isn't tobacco interesting" note but ends on a panegyric which comes off as a trifle naive in the face of what Gately himself has written. I don't question Gately's right to smoke or even the implication that anti-smoking has become something of an emotional crusade with science being used as a bludgeoning tool, but Gately's own Tobacco: A Cultural History simply doesn't lend itself to a rah, rah approach in favor of the weed.

Recommendation: Despite the three stars, give it try. The history is fascinating.

As someone interested in the history of tobacco and cigarettes who has read a few tomes on these subjects, I can say that this one, while not as in-depth as some, certainly covers it all. This is a very engaging read and worth the paltry price for anyone interested in the subject. The information on tobacco chewing in the US in the 1800's is wonderful. The bibliography is also very good, as well as the appendix on tobacco cultivation, curing and manufacturing. This is definitely the kind of book you want to reread and refer to at regular intervals. Cheap at twice the price.

Tobacco is an entertaining, nonscholarly look at the role tobacco has played in shaping our civilization over the last five hundred years or so. Gately provides plenty of fascinating information about the importance of tobacco to the Native Americans, Africans, and Europeans in Europe and in North America and does so with a witty, light touch and an ear for a good story, such as how the Hottentots became monotesticular.

The first sections of the book deal with tobacco's spread from the Americas to the rest of the world and its impact on different societies. Towards the end Gately primarily concentrates on tobacco's history in the US and Britain. Gately is British and apparently doesn't have too firm a grasp on American history, because he makes some errors and oversimplifications from time to time that will jump out at US readers, but that's only a minor distraction. While I could have wished for more discussion of the reasons for the increasing number of smokers in Asia and the Third World, I did enjoy Gately's comparisons of the anti-smoking campaigns in Britain and the US during the 1960s and the 1970s. All in all an interesting look at a plant which shaped our society for both good and ill.

This was a great book that I couln't stop reading. It has all the facts and anecdotes about Tobacco around the world. Every page is full with them.

(I originally wrote this for the UK version of this book on Amazon's UK website).
Put simply, this is a great read. Years of expensive education taught me less about history than Gately has succeeded in doing in 300 fluent pages. But don't think that this is the kind of book that drags its heels as so many non-fiction books can. It's not so much a roller-coaster ride but rather a non-stop tobaggan run as Gately takes you from tobacco's pre-historical roots to its present position as the world's most heavily consumed addictive commodity. Forget the innocent presumption you had that tobacco has done little for history other than hang around in famous mouths (such as Churchill's, Macarthur's, Raleigh's etc.). If it hadn't been for tobacco's influence then half the historical events of the past five hundred years would have turned out differently or might not even have happened at all.
Gately's also very funny, with a tremendous eye for the amusing or the absurd, and he doesn't hesitate to have a dig at anyone who thinks, talks or looks like a fathead. He also comes up with some memorable descriptions which simply beg to be repeated to friends (e.g. the popularity among various races over the centuries of having nicotine enemas, the idea of which makes my mind boggle). My favourite story is his account of the Hottentot males' coming-of-age and how as a race they declined into 'mono-testicular oblivion'. Read the book to find out why they ended up a ball short.
I don't smoke but halfway through this book I rather wished I did as it seems that non-smokers have been missing out on everything for the last five hundred years. It's pretty clear that Gately is a smoker, but don't worry, this book is balanced and the smoking lobby and tobacco companies come in for just as much of a kicking as the antis. He also covers the masses as well as the rich and great, and anybody who was anybody appears between these pages.
I hope Gately is writing something else, because for a first non-fiction book he has really come up with a cracking read and if he gets better at this kind of think then he'll really make his mark. As for its audience, it'll be appreciated by almost everybody, especially by people who do smoke and certainly by people who hate the habit. There are pictures for those of you who can't look at a book without getting a headache ..., and an index for those of you who want to find out if you've been mentioned (you haven't). Sit back and enjoy.
(In the UK the book is called La Diva Nictoina)

A stimulant employed for medicinal and ritual usages by Native American cultures going back thousands of years, it was the coming of the Europeans that enabled tobacco to become a part of every culture in the world and through 20th Century advertising practices, to become an established cultural icon even while being discovered as the source of numerous, often lethal, ailments for its habituated and addicted users. Tobacco: A Cultural History Of How An Exotic Plant Seduced Civilization by journalist Iain Gately is a fascinating, informative and in-depth look at the addictive and deadly drug that has become intertwined with the American way of life throughout the centuries. Individual chapters discuss everything from ancient use of tobacco among native peoples to how tobacco is grown today. A compelling, meticulously researched, occasionally humorous and always well written read, Tobacco is strongly recommended for both school and library collections.

Both early and near the end of TOBACCO: A CULTURAL HISTORY OF HOW AN EXOTIC PLANT SEDUCED CIVILIZATION, the book offers some strong opinions on the "evil weed". King James I was the first anti-smoking crusader and set a standard for vituperation which nobody can match today. After correctly stating how harmful it is to brain and lungs, he casts it back to the depths whence it came. Gately says the King believed it "had a family tie to witchcraft" and was "the black, stinking fume thereof nearest resembling the horrible Stygian smoke of the pit that is bottomless." In the latter chapters, Gately highlights the modern day demonization of the weed by way of law suits against the tobacco companies and criticisms by health professionals. Gately remains very balanced with his analysis and states that both sides have been guilty of bad science with selective use of statistics. He only gets fired up like old King James (but on tobacco's side) when he discusses the fallacious arguments for a ban on smoking because of second-hand dangers to non-smokers.

The majority of the book is a well researched, easy reading, sometimes humorous narrative about this long association between plant and man. Research traces tobacco's origins back some 5,000 years to the Andean highlands where it was used in shamanic rituals by South American natives. Gately's cultural history however is more concerned with the recent story; its conquest of Europe and the world in the last 500 years. When Europeans arrived in the new world they saw native Americans "drinking smoke" from long cigars and Gately says the first European smokers may have been Rodrigo de Jerez and Luis de Torres who picked up the habit on one of Columbus's voyages. As a smoker himself, Gately has no difficulty in explaining tobacco's charms. He writes about it as "a pleasure, a comforter and a friend" and for most of our history it seems many of us agreed. The French used it as a medicine and a cosmetic, colonial America used it in barter, others "found the habit strangely compulsive" and its use spread. It was not just smoking either. Royals snuffed and snorted, but it was also drunk, chewed, and in Victorian England taken as a type of enema. Among the various other uses are: disenfectant, currency, peace token, appetite suppressant, and the answer for many problems from boredom to the Plague. History is replete with many cruel ironies and tobacco's story is no different. It was once seen as a cure for cancer.

Gately tells us that by the early 1600's the Virginia Company was established with the purpose of making a successful commercial venture out of our desire for the plant. Growing tobacco is a labor intensive business and while plant and land was abundant, labor was not. The origins of the African slave trade Gately argues can thus be linked to our fixation with tobacco. Since tobacco is the focus of this book we should not be surprised by the lack of mention of sugar and cotton. However the fact that these two crops were far more important in sustaining the slave trade means that the omission is a minor oversight. Gately shows the role colonization played in spreading both the plant and its habits around the world. He tells us the origins of the word nicotine and delves into all things scientific, economic, and cultural associated with tobacco.

The changing public image of smoking makes for fascinating reading. Long gone are the days when it was strictly a man's pastime (and a rich man at that) with "so many smoking accessories, including tobacco boxes, knives, tongs and pipes" required "that a dedicated manservant" was needed. The emergence and acceptance of women smokers in the early part of this century can be linked to their changing role in society. Gately shows the powerful impact advertising, Hollywood, and a brilliant manufactured innovation - the cigarette - had in changing societal views about tobacco.

Gately has written a thoroughly enjoyable and very informative history about tobacco that can be appreciated by all, smokers or not.

I enjoyed Tobacco very much, and read it over the course of three evenings. I learned a great deal from it.

The first 200 pages deal with tobacco's history prior to the 20th century - its use for religious and medical purposes, and the two most common methods of use, pipes and snuff.

The remaining 150 pages concern 20th century cigarette use, including the final two chapters which deal with lung cancer and government anti-smoking policies.

I highly recommend this book, but find two faults:

1) There is very little discussion of cigars.

2) This is an American printing of a British book. I would have liked to have read much more about the American tobacco industry of the 20 century.