Customer Reviews

Velvet Glove, Iron Fist: A History of Anti-Smoking

5 star:		(7)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(0)
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1 star:		(0)

 

 

The history of antismoking began when Columbus brought tobacco from America to Spain - and the Inquisition clapped some of his crew into irons for smoking. Fast forward to that great public health promoter, Adolf Hitler, who tried to make Germany and much the world smoke-free. Fortunately for us, he was defeated by the armies of Churchill and Roosevelt - one a cigar, the other a cigarette smoker.

Tyrannical prohibitionists are at work today. Here, in New York, we have an ex-smoker billionaire mayor forcing poor smokers to huddle in the rain in the doorways. Elsewhere, my daughter just returned from dirt-poor authoritarian Turkmenistan where it is illegal to smoke in the streets. The fine is $50, which is about a month's salary for locals, and police enforcement is harsh. Why? Because their president stopped smoking and did not want to see other smokers from the window of his limo.

Snowdon writes in a engaging, lively, and sophisticated style. He runs through the scientific evidence: the addictiveness but also the relative harmlessness of nicotine; the health hazards of tar in cigarettes; the ridiculous claims about `secondary smoke.'

The anti-smoking campaigners started out mild and reasonable. They told us to be compassionate to fellow office workers in enclosed spaces. Emboldened by their success, they drove an ever harder bargain. The velvet glove was off and the iron fist of criminalizing tobacco was out. Their campaigns are very well documented in this book.

As a life-long recreational cigar smoker - as well as a man who literally risked his life for freedom - I read this book from cover to cover. It was like nicotine, which paradoxically both relaxes and sharpens the mind. My only minor criticism of this book is that it was written by a Brit and not edited for the American lingo prior to its publication in this country.

What next? What will happen with the Berlin Wall that had been built around smokers in this country, in much of Europe, and not to forget Cuba and Turkmenistan - what will cause that wall to fall?

I feel grateful to the author for his engaging history and wish every thinking person owned a copy. Perhaps that will help to begin cracking the wall.

British author Christopher Snowdon has written a book that will rank in history up next to Jacob Sullum's For Your Own Good and Richard Kluger's massive Ashes to Ashes. It may even end up outshining both previous works as his combination of excellent research skills combines with an engaging writing style that makes Velvet Glove, Iron Fist both more readable and more fulfilling than either of them.

At roughly 400 pages, Snowdon doesn't present the sheer mass of information that Kluger's Pulitzer Prize winning Ashes does, but his focus on the antismoking movement (as opposed to Kluger's wider ranging examination of the tobacco industry and its battles) manages to convey far more information about this one important aspect of the subject and does it in a far more accessible manner. His exacting care for references and facts duplicates Sullum's, but although Sullum's style is readable and enjoyable I believe he has been outdone by his British counterpart.

Velvet Glove will be particularly attractive to British and European audiences because, while Snowdon provides a comprehensive overview of the American antismoking movement, he pays special attention to the building and history of that movement across the sea. His approach embodies a strong neutrality that will win him friends and enemies on both sides of the issue but his objective examinations of the scientific distortions behind the antismoking movement serve as a damning indictment despite their objectivity. While the subtitle of the book is "A History of Anti-smoking," Snowdon's meticulous approach to the science involved in the debate goes far beyond what anyone else has yet offered.

I am proud to go on record in giving this book a fully deserved five stars.

Michael J. McFadden

Author of Dissecting Antismokers' Brains

I got this book yesterday, and I've already read most of it. It's fascinating. Extensive research, and extremely well-written - a page-turner. I hadn't realized that evidence linking smoking to lung cancer had surfaced so far back in the 1930's - 1950's, and was dismissed by the politicians, who were concerned about their tax revenues, and doctors, many of whom smoked. At the same time, the anti-smoking movement is truly frightening - the tendencies that are being unleashed, to demonize and segregate segments of society, starting with smokers and moving on from there. Excellent, excellent book. Would recommend it to anyone because it's such an eye-opener from a number of angles.

This is a great example of what history should be. It's thoroughly researched but doesn't get bogged down in the details, and it's so well written that it keeps your interest to the end. Snowdon is no friend of hysterical anti-smoking campaigns, and what he reveals of their bad science and intolerance deserves to be more widely known. But he stays even-handed throughout, and you don't have to be an angry smoker to enjoy this book.

excellent book-it speaks to the larger subject of the corruption & politicization of science, and its place in our society today.

This is an extremely well-written book based on exhaustive research, as the other reviewers have said, but the important part in my view is that it provides a case study of social "Puritans" and their methods. I define "Puritan" here as H.L. Mencken did: "Somebody who's desperately afraid that somewhere, somebody is having a good time." While the vehicle of Snowdon's story is the anti-smoking crowd, the perversion of science, the twisting of facts, the outright, bald-faced lying, in this case with the complicity of some of the highest levels of our governments and society, and the overwhelming drive to force other people to change their behavior could describe any one of a number of self-righteous groups: anti-drug, anti-alcohol, the gun control crowd, anti-abortion, environmentalists, PETA, and on and on. Besides displaying a high level of readibility, it leaves you with a better understanding of what drives much of our current social agenda, leaving you better armed to question the claims you hear, see and read. Ethics and fairness clearly get left far behind in the desperate striving for power and dominion over their fellow men (and women ;-), as this book illustrates in great, but not too much, detail.

This is a fantastic book - well-researched, balanced, objective, and what's more I couldn't put it down. As many people as possible should read this so they can wake up to what's going on in 'health' these days.