The Cigarette Century: The Rise, Fall and Deadly Persistence of the Product That Defined America, Brandt - B +

            “The cigarette permeates twentieth-century America as smoke fills an enclosed room. This book centers attention on how the cigarette deeply penetrated American culture.” After decades of warnings that tobacco smoking was dangerous, the Surgeon General officially reported in 1964 that smoking caused lung cancer. The industry’s emphasis on freedom of choice and its disputing of the science sustained domestic business for another three decades. Opponents began to focus on secondhand smoke and on suing the tobacco companies. By the 1990s, only a quarter of Americans were smoking, the lowest number since the 1920s.

          The modern cigarette was invented in the late nineteenth century, and its growth was propelled by a machine that replaced hand rollers. Buck Duke was the man who organized mass production and sophisticated marketing to sell cigarettes and create a new industry. He formed the American Tobacco Company, a trust with 90 percent market share. American Tobacco, along with U.S. Steel and Standard Oil, was eventually targeted in the Progressive Era. The ensuing oligopoly—American Tobacco, Liggett and Myers, P. Lorillard, and R.J. Reynolds—dominated a still noncompetitive environment. The era also saw the rise of an anti-tobacco crusade that equated smoking with drinking as pathways to lives of immorality. “The movement marked the intensification of a fundamental conflict in values between the Victorian and the modern.” The affection of the men of the U.S. Army during the First World War for cigarettes effectively ended the crusade against tobacco use. In the 1920s, three marketed and promoted national brands came to dominate the American market: Camel, Chesterfield, and Lucky Strike. “The cigarette century had arrived.”

         The interwar years saw increasing sophistication in advertising to sell and identify brands aimed at specific segments of the population. Philip Morris joined the Big Three in 1933 by advertising cigarettes that were lighter and healthier. Lorillard promoted Old Gold, thus assuring that for half a century the market would be shared by five firms. By 1950, Americans were smoking 350 billion cigarettes per year.

          The postwar years saw heightened concern about tobacco’s ill effects on health. The simple fact that lung cancer deaths had increased threefold was deftly ignored by an industry countering with claims of the health benefits of smoking. Many opponents emphasized issues tangential to health risks, such as smoking worsening study habits, fostering delinquency, inhibiting lactation, or simply not being congenial to femininity. The deleterious effects of smoking did not come to the fore because it took decades for smoking to manifest its consequences and, most importantly, because people were living much longer than their ancestors. Nonetheless, the proofs were beginning to mount. “By the early 1950s, it was abundantly clear that the evidence implicating cigarette smoking as a risk to health was now of a different order.” The industry’s response was to “produce and sustain scientific skepticism and controversy.” It retained Hill and Knowlton in 1953 to launch a major public relations counter to the emerging medical consensus. Hill set up the Tobacco Industry Research Committee to offer controlled advice that appeared objective. The TIRC attacked causation theories and argued that heredity was the compelling factor in cancer deaths. “The TIRC was designed to direct the attention away from the questions of immediate concern to the American public: the health effects of smoking.” Even when the industry’s internal scientists concluded that the link between smoking and cancer was accurate, management “continued to offer blanket assurances to consumers and stockholders.” The public was content; by 1961, Americans were smoking 488 billion cigarettes per year. “By making science fair game in the battle of public relations, the tobacco industry set a destructive precedent that would affect future debate on subjects ranging from global warming to intelligent design.”

          In 1962, Surgeon General Luther Terry began a study of the risks of smoking. “What Terry sought—and ultimately got—was a political document that was scientifically unimpeachable.” The January 1964 Surgeon General’s Report stated unequivocally that smoking caused lung cancer. The industry’s “denial and distortion” strategy would no longer succeed. The battle shifted to the political arena, which remained supportive of Big Tobacco. The 1965 Federal Cigarette Labeling and Advertising Act was written by the industry and watered down the warning label to “may be hazardous to your health.” An application to the FCC in 1967 to apply the fairness doctrine to television ads gave opponents hours of airtime to counter cigarette advertising. Cigarette consumption dropped one percent per year for the next four years. Before advertising could be banished from the airwaves, the industry stopped television ads voluntarily, shifting dollars to print media. For all intents and purposes, attempts to regulate the industry failed. It remained free to sell its lethal products to the public.

         The concept that smoking was an individual’s choice prevailed in the marketplace of ideas. “But what if the risks were not purely individual?” Smoke as an “environmental toxin” would change the debate. It was not the threat to the individual but to society that turned the tide. In 1975, Minnesota became the first state to ban smoking in public spaces. By 1981, thirty-six states had some restrictions on smoking. Boeing was the first company to ban smoking in the workplace. Smoking was banned on all airplane flights in the U.S. in 1990.

        The first lawsuits against Big Tobacco began in the 1950s. The 1983 Cipollone case in New Jersey ran for almost a decade and achieved the first jury award. The industry’s Achilles’ heel—its cover-up of knowledge of the risks—was exposed during discovery. The award was reversed on appeal, dealing a blow to the plaintiffs’ bar, but several issues discussed in the appellate opinion gave lawyers hope.

        The mounting exposure of the industry’s knowledge of nicotine addiction meant that “the firewall surrounding the tobacco industry’s intricate scientific, legal, and trade secrets was about to come down.” A television report featuring an industry insider revealed that companies sometimes added nicotine to specific brands to increase addictiveness. This was the smoking gun that would punish the industry in America. In 1994, the spectacle of five tobacco company CEOs telling the Waxman Committee that cigarettes were safe was an unmitigated public relations nightmare. Tobacco was now “a rogue industry.” A whistleblower copied and released 4,000 internal Brown and Williamson documents going back three decades, proving the company knew tobacco was addictive and harmful and took steps to hide that information.

          Litigation would undo the industry. Broin v. Philip Morris was a class action on behalf of 60,000 flight attendants. The usual defense assumption-of-risk arguments would not work in a case involving nonsmokers. The defendants’ scorched-earth legal tactics consumed six years of pretrial maneuvering before a five-month trial in 1997. The industry settled for the first time, for $300 million. Class action suits proliferated. One particularly creative case involved suing on behalf of the state of Mississippi to recover Medicaid costs for treating smoking-related illnesses. Thirty more states joined the litigation. Around the country, individual plaintiffs began receiving jury awards that were upheld on appeal. In 1997, the companies settled with most of the states for the astounding sum of $365.5 billion, to be paid over twenty-five years. One irony was that the states now needed Big Tobacco to remain profitable enough to keep paying. As the century closed, tobacco consumption dropped by 20 percent. Although smoking has been stigmatized, millions still smoke, and lung cancer remains the nation’s leading killer. As for the tobacco companies who appeared on the verge of collapse, the new century saw “the industry emerge decidedly intact, ready to do business profitably at home and abroad.”

        “One of the most disturbing ironies of twentieth-century public health is that it was the relative success in reducing tobacco use in the developed world that spurred the sharp increase in cigarette use in developing nations.” There will be more deaths from cigarette smoking in this century—an estimated one billion—than in the last century’s 100 million. By 2030, “developing nations will claim 70 percent of the world’s overall tobacco mortality.” The industry playbook that expanded American consumption is now being repeated overseas, in countries with limited oversight and regulation, and with the assistance of U.S. government encouragement of free trade.

        This Pulitzer Prize–winning book is almost twenty years old. Since smoking slipped from its place of prominence in our lives to its current place of ignominy, I paid zero attention to it and had no awareness of its international spread. It appears that Big Tobacco is alive and well. For those with a cynical view of the world, this book affirms the primacy of money, the drive to make money, and our society’s addiction to profit regardless of human cost.

Wild Animal, Dicker - B +

                     This is an absolute blast of a page-turner of a novel, set in Geneva, where nobody is really who they appear to be. Arpad is a successful and charming banker, but no one knows he has a massive skeleton in his closet. His amazing wife, Sophia, is a lawyer, devoted wife, and mother—but maybe not all the time. Their neighbor Greg heads up the city’s SWAT team but has succumbed to a perverted obsession. Their paths collide and culminate in a high-end heist in broad daylight. Twists, turns, surprises, etc. I’m providing very little info here because this is a must-read.

Beartooth, Wink - B

          This highly acclaimed novel appears on multiple “best of” lists for the year. Thad and Hazen, brothers in their twenties, live off the grid in a house built by their grandfather and left to them by their father. They’re buried in debt and about to lose the house. Living just outside Yellowstone, they take a run at poaching elk antler, but it all goes awry when Thad breaks his arm. Hazen takes him to a hospital, where he is patched up and released. A year later, Thad’s arm hasn’t properly healed, and he’s addicted to Oxy. Hazen kills a man threatening them and disappears into the vast wilderness of Montana. Thad puts his head down and soldiers on his own.

          The story is intriguing, and the detailed discussion of living in the wild is interesting. Not sure about all the praise.

The Book of I, Greig - B +

                  I is the island of Iona, off Scotland’s western coast. This fascinating and brief novel opens with a Viking raid on the monastery and the murder of all but one of the monks, along with most of the island’s occupants. The next day, the king’s men arrive to bury the dead and remove the survivors to the mainland. A young monk, Martin, and the late smithy’s wife, Una, choose to stay.  Grimur, the eldest Viking, had become so drunk the day before on Una’s mead that his comrades buried him, believing him dead. He rises from the grave with help from Brother Martin, who had been praying for him. When Grimur sees the monastery’s Book of I—page after page of brilliantly illustrated parchment—he decides to help Martin rebuild the island. He repairs the monastery, fixes up Una’s cottage, and moves in with her. Over the summer, a young woman named Bronagh arrives from Ireland, seeking a solitary life devoted to the contemplation of God. They gladly accommodate her, but after two months of prayer she leaves. One day, as Martin speaks to Grimur about God’s love, Grimur goes berserk and tells Martin that the world is about blood, lust, and murder, not love and forgiveness. He then gets drunk, kills one of the horses, and rolls in its blood. Martin retreats into his work, determined to complete the Holy Gospel of John the Apostle before the Vikings return. Late in the year 826, he finishes. Within days, the red sail of a Viking ship appears on the horizon. When they land, however, they are met by a ghost. Grimur, covered in ash and ghostly white, appears before his former companions. Only Helgi, their leader, refuses to believe it and is promptly dispatched to Valhalla by Grimur. Martin takes the holy book to a safer place, while Una and Grimur settle down on Iona. Brilliantly creative.

The Feeling Of Iron, Alonge - B +

                 In the early 1980s, two men in their sixties are approached because of their pasts and asked to help bring a high-ranking SS officer to justice. Shlomo Liebovitz, an Israeli Pole, is flown to Europe by a loosely structured group of survivors that pursues Nazi war criminals and seeks revenge for the deaths of millions. Anton Epstein, a Czech doctor, is contacted by state authorities on behalf of the KGB. Their target is former Maj. Hans Lichtblau. Lichtblau ran a medical and scientific operation in East Prussia that cruelly inflicted wounds on prisoners and experimented with surgical techniques. It is believed that he slipped out of the war zone with the ingredients for a drug capable of enabling a soldier to fight for days without rest. The KGB wanted the drug, and Shlomo wanted revenge. The two men had been prisoners who labored as Lichtblau’s assistants. As the war wound down, Lichtblau, who had been born in America, was able to escape on the Vatican rat line and go to work for the U.S. Operation Paperclip, which employed German scientists. When the Russians came, Epstein headed south to Prague and Shlomo walked west. Two years later, Shlomo disembarked in Palestine. Together, they trail Lichtblau to Central America, and Shlomo lights up a cigar as he watches the Nazi die.

        This is a superb novel that has made most of the best-of lists as the year ends. It deftly tells a complex tale and moves seamlessly between the war years and the pursuit of Lichtblau.

Stray Bullets, Rotenberg - B+

              A shootout at a Tim Hortons ends in the death of a four-year-old boy. The shooter was a lifelong criminal named Dewey, but his buddy Larkin, another of life’s losers who had picked up the pistol and ran away, is arrested the next day. Dewey’s lawyer comes forward and tells the Crown prosecutor, Ralph Armitage, that Dewey will tell the authorities where the murder weapon is in exchange for an assurance he won’t be prosecuted. Detective Ari Greene thinks the deal is bad, and the affidavit the lawyer submitted is inconclusive. When a young Romanian undocumented worker, Dragomir, who saw the whole thing, reads that Dewey’s made a deal, he knows he has to say something. He approaches Armitage and tells him he has the wrong man, that Dewey did it. Knowing he was in over his head and that he was prosecuting the wrong man, Armitage sweeps Dragomir’s information aside in an attempt to bury the truth. A mistrial lets Armitage pass off the second trial to someone on his staff and put the whole mess behind him. However, Greene finds Dragomir and sees that justice is done. Once again, another great book by this author, who is a trial lawyer in Toronto and a very talented man.

Out Of Hitler's Shadow: Debt, Guilt, and the German Economic Miracle, Straumann - C +

        This brief book is about an event, long forgotten but of some import. Dean Acheson realized that the establishment of an independent West Germany, NATO, and the Marshall Plan left unresolved a major impediment to European recovery: Germany’s vast debts were unpaid, and many throughout Europe sought reparations. The US, France, and Britain established a Tripartite Commission to negotiate with Konrad Adenauer. Before those negotiations began, West Germany agreed to provide 3 billion DM to Israel and signed a treaty for the European Coal and Steel Community with France, Italy, and the Benelux countries.

        The Allies eventually agreed to reduce all prewar debts by half and require full repayment of postwar borrowings. Any consideration of reparations would be postponed until German reunification. The London Debt Agreement of 1952 was generous to Germany but certainly helped Europe’s recovery and established a peaceful, stable political environment. Ultimately, Germany paid additional billions to Israel, various charities and European countries, and numerous individuals. After reunification, the US, Britain, France, and the USSR agreed to no war reparation claims. All in all, it was a very successful diplomatic process.

Tigers Between Empires: The Improbable Return Of Great Cats To The Forests Of Russia And China, Slaght - B

          "Once secure at the top of the food chain, Amur tigers had roamed unchallenged across nearly three million square kilometers of northeast Asia for thousands of years." In the 19th century, there were approximately 3,000 tigers living mostly on the Russian side of the Amur basin. After decades of hunting and habitat loss, they were almost extinct a century ago. There may have been as few as twenty or thirty. The Soviet Union began to protect them in the 1930s. On the Chinese side of the river, the number plummeted from 2,000 to approximately twenty in the 1980s.

          The American–Russian Amur Tiger Project began in 1992. "The research questions they sought to answer were—how much space do tigers need—how much prey do they eat—and how do they die." Their success has led to conservation efforts throughout Asia. The Russians contributed the land and extensive outdoor skills, and the Americans had the technology to track, sedate, and collar a tiger. On February 11, 1992, the Project sedated and tagged the first tiger ever captured and released. She was a young 75 lb. cub who they named Olga. Progress was slow, and the second capture seemed unachievable, and they needed more success to obtain continuing governmental support. They caught their second (Lena) on June 22, the day before their permit was set to expire. She was an average-sized adult female weighing 250 pounds. A September catch (Natasha) was another female, 227 pounds and probably three years old. A bit further along in the fall, the team awoke one morning to find three tigers in their snares near a kill site they had discovered the day before. They were able to sedate and collar two of the three, Kolya and Ektarina. They now had five radio transmitters pouring information into their home base. They realized that their second catch, Lena, probably gave birth to cubs and began to pay close attention. When Lena was killed by a poacher, they captured her four eleven-week-old cubs, who were the size of a cocker spaniel. Two survived and were moved to a zoo in Nebraska.

           In early 1994, the team decided to recapture Olga and replace her collar and battery. They tried their first helicopter capture, shot her while hanging out of an ancient Soviet-era copter, and four biologists rappelled down to the site. They were successful, and ultimately Olga was the longest-studied tiger ever tagged and followed, as she was later recaptured a total of six times. However, wary of the ways of the project, she managed her litters to avoid the snares, and none of her cubs were ever captured. Olga was poached in early 2005. She was 14.

          The project continued to succeed, and around the turn of the century it began to work on the Chinese side of the Amur River. The Chinese established game reserves on their side of the border. It was the golden era of tiger preservation and management. Beginning in 2006, Russian government support declined, and President Putin began to plan for a Russian-only staffed tiger project. Nonetheless, Dale Miquelle, the man who had been the American lead since 1992, carried on with his American and Russian colleagues. The new century also saw the introduction of GPS support, providing vastly greater amounts of information than the old VHS system. The deterioration in Russian civil society led to increased poaching unlike anything seen in the first decade of the project. More human incursions and roads meant more tigers dead before their time. Fortunately, in 2012, Russia created the Land of Leopard National Park, which, when combined with a Chinese reserve, provided 2,619 square kilometers of peaceful living. Russia also increased the fines for poaching tigers. The same year, they captured a total of six cubs and began the arduous process of training them to live on their own. The first and the oldest was named Zolushka. All six cubs were released far to the west in an area where tigers had once lived, and five prospered.

          Right about the time that snares were made illegal, foreigners and foreign NGO's fell out of favor, and the project was wrapped into a larger Russian entity. As tensions over Ukraine mounted, Dale flew to America in 2022. He resides in Montana and travels to Asia assisting in tiger conservation. The Siberian Tiger Project is considered to be wildly successful and a major step in saving the animals from extinction. Russia has even built a tunnel on a major highway to give animals safe passage over the road. There are 500 tigers in the Amur region, but they face ongoing challenges from the human population. Today, as China and Russia become politically closer, the two nations have increased the protected reserve areas on both sides of the Amur, and there is hope that someday the population of tigers will again exceed 1,000. This is a fascinating read, leaving one with admiration for the men and women who have devoted their lives to animal conservation.

No Surrender, Hiaasen - B

         Ex-governor of Florida, Clinton Tyree, a/k/a Skink, stumbles upon young Richard one night while he's staking out turtle-egg poachers. Richard's teenage cousin, Malley, has taken off with someone she met online. Skink ascertains that the boyfriend is dangerous and sets out with Richard to find his cousin. On the way to rescuing Malley, Skink gets his foot run over, wrestles with a gator in a river, and is shot twice. Always a blast, and it includes a lesson on ivory-billed woodpeckers.

Wild Instinct, Parker - B +

         This is a very good police procedural set in the OC in California. Lew Gale is a 43-year-old detective, half Hispanic and half Indigenous Acjacheme, who is assigned a new partner, Daniela, and a very high-profile murder case. How does a billionaire developer get shot while photographing a rare owl by a bartender-bum at night in a state park? They track down every lead and conclude it had to be a job for hire. The question then becomes who benefits from the man’s death. Only by stumbling upon a construction site late one night do they finally understand the issues at stake and solve the case.

          This is compelling because of the character development of the two detectives. Daniela struggles to raise an 18-year-old boy while lying to him his entire life about who his dad is. Lew copes with the consequences of injuries in Afghanistan, and most importantly, is the character who speaks at length about his tribe and its centuries-old struggles against Spanish, Mexican, and American oppression.