Overview

\u0022Fox News Watch\u0022 host Eric Burns, who chronicled the social history of alcohol in The Spirits of America turns to tobacco in The Smoke of the Gods. Ranging from ancient times to the present day, The Smoke of the Gods is a lively history of tobacco, especially in the United States. Although tobacco use is controversial in the U.S. today, Burns reminds us that this was not always the case. For centuries tobacco was generally thought to have medicinal and even spiritual value. Most of the signers of the Declaration of Independence were tobacco users or growers, or both. According to Burns, tobacco changed the very course of U.S. history, because its discovery caused the British to support Jamestown, its struggling New World colony. An entertaining and informative look at a subject that makes daily news headlines, The Smoke of the Gods is a history that is, well, quite addictive.

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9781592134809

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Reviews

[A]n entertaining account of one of our most familiar national vices...This is narrative history with a lively, light touch and will likely find a willing audience...The author aims to entertain and inform, and he does both very well. -Virginia Quarterly Review

entertaining... a fascinating, supremely readable historical account. The Chicago Sun-Times Burns tells good stories about people's fascination with tobacco, especially as 'smoke,' and understands well the connections between advertising and smoking. His book is especially useful regarding responses to tobacco consumption including revealing account of 19th-century anti-tobacco reform and the scientific and social arguments against it in recent years. Library Journal A genial social history that backhandedly glorifies this 'first successful American export' while tracing its 'mesmerizing' mystique.Burns is an able writer and researcher. Publishers Weekly Praise for The Spirits of America: A Social History of Alcohol: Burns has written a delightful book and an intelligent one. It is easily the best popular history of drink and its enemies in the United States for the period before 1933. The Historian An entertaining account of one of our most familiar national vices...This is narrative history with a lively, light touch and will likely find a willing audience...The author aims to entertain and inform, and he does both very well. Virginia Quarterly Review

Author Information

Eric Burns is the host of ""Fox News Watch"" on the Fox News Channel. He was named by the Washington Journalism Review as one of the best writers in the history of broadcast journalism. His other books include The Spirits of America: A Social History of Alcohol (Temple), Broadcast Blues, The Joy of Books, and Infamous Scribblers.

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