A Little Bit Deadly

It is irresponsible and possibly evil, I suppose, to begin reviewing a book that plots the extraordinary if depressing success of big tobacco in circumnavigating all the solemn efforts to eradicate a known addictive killer by extolling the joys of that very addiction. But let’s do it anyway.

Smoking! If you’ve never done it, never gone off it (again and again), never been grateful for an illicit puff, then Joshua Knelman’s intriguing psychodrama will pitch differently to your stolid, unsullied, and determined soul. Perhaps it’d be better for you to read and be usefully challenged by Paul W. Gooch’s wonderful new treatise on Saint Paul (Paul and Religion: Unfinished Conversations ). That way you wouldn’t have to marvel at the clever duplicity that tobacco companies engage in so their businesses might survive the collective warnings of all the leading medical and health specialists against a noxious weed. After all, there’s only so much tsk-tsking one can be...