Nicotine Girl (A Cultural History of Tobacco)

Author: Ian Gatley
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2004-01-01
Features: Why Smoke? I was unintentionally reminded of my habits in my late teens. At that time, I lived in Hong Kong, where smoking was a common practice, as natural as instinct rather than a habit. I began to ponder this question during a trip to southeastern China with a non-smoking friend. She came from the ancient civilizations of South America, charming, exhilarating, yet full of deception and hidden danger; she had been loved, hated, and banned, yet still possessed an excessive allure; she posed as a witch, a healer, but was actually just a deadly poison. From the Andes Mountains to outer space, from magical elixirs to fashionable symbols, from spiritual messengers to sexual mediums, from the wrath of tyrants to the preference of presidents, from global currencies to health destroyers—was she a sorceress or a butcher? Was she inspiring people or enslaving them? This book takes you into the world of the "Nicotine Lady" and tells the story of the most widely consumed and highly taxed lethal substance on our planet—tobacco.