From Booklist
Entry length ranges from just over a page for Black Patch War (an early-twentieth-century conflict between Kentucky tobacco growers and the American Tobacco Company) and Opium to more than 10 pages for Disease and mortality and prohibitions. Each entry concludes with a bibliography, and numerous terms are defined in page margins. Other features of the set include 250 well-chosen and well-reproduced black-and-white illustrations and, in both volumes, a section of color plates. Sidebars contribute additional facts and perspective.
What readers will not see is any primary source material, such as the tobacco company documents laying out marketing strategies and ways in which products could be made more addictive. The liability trials are covered only in general terms, subsumed under the broad category Litigation, and documents released during the trials are discussed primarily as documents, with little being said about specific contents. Still, this is an important foundational work, for which researchers can easily find supplemental sources that provide more detail. This first volume in the new Scribner Turning Points Library line is recommended for high-school, academic, and public libraries. Harold Cordry
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