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Christopher Buckley's satirical gift shines in this hilarious look at the ironies of "personal freedom" and the unbearable smugness of political correctness. Bracing in its cynicism, Thank You for Smoking is a delightful meander off the beaten path of mainstream American ethics. And despite his hypertension-inducing, slander-splattered, morally bankrupt behavior--which leads one Larry King listener to describe him as "lower than whale crap"--you'll find yourself rooting for smoking's mass enabler. --Rebekah Warren --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
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Nick Naylor's life provides the basis for Buckley's often hilarious look at the "neo-puritanism" of mid-nineties America and the attempts of tobacco companies to fight it. And although I hate cigarettes, I think a book like this needed to be written. Anybody who's ever been repulsed by those ridiculous "Truth" ads where a bunch of obnoxious young people harass those who make and sell cigarettes should get a good laugh at Buckley's portrayal of the sanctimonious forces of political correctness. As Nick tells Oprah Winfrey in one uproarious scene, cigarette opponents aren't above manipulating children and trying to tell everyone else how to think. And anything that takes the wind out of the sails of political correctness is fine by me.
... Read more ›I picked up Thank You For Smoking at the suggestion of a friend, and was pulled into the narrative immediately. The story is so tightly and entertainingly written that I practically inhaled it (pun intended), taking less than a day to finish the book's nearly 300 pages even though for the most part I had to read it a few pages at a time while working at a conference.
Author Christopher Buckley pulled off the seemingly impossible here: making a despicable protagonist like Nick Naylor seem sympathetic. I won't go into the way Mr. Buckley does it, but it is definitely worth finding out for yourself.
My only complaint is that the ending to the story wraps up a little too neatly, a little too much like Hollywood. It's a weakness, but not a serious enough of a weakness to cloud the value of this original and clever book.