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(More customer reviews)Tobacco is "certainly the most equivocal substance in daily human use," according to Iain Gately. His author photo shows him unequivocally smoking his cigar, and so you might expect that he would go easy on the weed in his book _Tobacco: A Cultural History of How an Exotic Plant Seduced Civilization_ (Grove Press). For those who think that cigarettes are an unalloyed curse, some of his book will be difficult reading. No history of tobacco can ignore the many social and health costs connected to the drug, and Gately's does not. But American Indians were using it for centuries, and in the five centuries since the conquest of the Americas, tobacco has insinuated itself into every diverse culture; there must be a reason that the killer drug is regarded by millions as a pleasure and a comfort. In fact, there are lots of reasons which the plant has exploited, and so it has a rich and complex history. Gately has researched widely and told the history well.
Tobacco has been part of human culture for about 18,000 years. It was cultivated in the Andes region about six thousand years ago, and only eventually smoked. "That lungs had a dual function - could be used for stimulation in addition to respiration - is one of the American continent's most significant contributions to civilization." The gift of dried tobacco leaves to Columbus in the Bahamas got thrown overboard; no one knew why the natives were getting rid of their tobacco leaves this way. The British took to snuff, in imitation of the fashionable French, but also smoked with pipes like the ones North American Indians used. The British were slow to follow the French in cigarette usage, for they were regarded as "a miserable apology" for the more manly pleasure of cigars or pipes; Oscar Wilde enjoyed horrifying society in many ways, and chain-smoking his effeminate cigarettes was one of them. All the nations of the world showed disgust at the particularly American practice of chewing tobacco and thereupon expectorating tinted spittle. Charles Dickens wrote, "In the courts of law, the judge has his spittoon, the crier his, the witness his, and the prisoner his; while the jurymen and the spectators are provided for, as so many men who in the course of nature must desire to spit incessantly." Modern advertising gets a good examination here; surprisingly, the Marlboro Man was originally no such thing; Philip Morris brought out Marlboros "Mild as May" in 1924, targeted for decent and respectable ladies.
Gately's book has not been edited to be turned into an American version, so American readers will note a disproportionate number of anecdotes and facts from Europe. (An appendix even tells how Her Majesty's subjects can grow the plant in England for their own use.) He has some limp support of tobacco as a guard against such illnesses as Alzheimer's and Parkinson's, and too often his disdain for the anti-smoking movement is obvious. However, this is a great subject. The effects of tobacco on bodies may be bad, and on society may be bad as well (slavery, for instance, was a New World tradition largely because of tobacco farms), and Gately tells the dark side of the stories well; this is not an apology or an advertisement for smoking, but more of a historical explanation. For anyone who smokes, or who is interested in a world-wide history centered on one particular plant and the uses to which addicted and habituated people have put it, _Tobacco_ tells an important story in an entertaining way.
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