The Joys of Smoking Cigarettes

by James Fitzgerald

Overview

You know who you are: you're one of the one billion adults who takes pleasure in smoking cigarettes. This one-of-a-kind treasure trove of memories, meditations, fascinating facts, tantalizing trivia, wit, and wisdom about smoking will only enhance the unparalleled pleasure of lighting up!

Did you know: Nearly 15 billion cigarettes are sold worldwide daily—about 10 million cigarettes every minute. . . . A single tablespoon of tobacco seeds can sow six acres of land. . . . Lucky Strike was originally the name of a chewing tobacco sold during the Gold Rush?

Gone are the days of TV tobacco ads ("Winston Tastes Good Like a Cigarette Should!"). Airplane and movie theater smoking sections and smoking cars on railroad trains are things of the halcyon past. But smoking carries on! The Joys of Smoking Cigarettes enables confirmed and unbowed tobacco enthusiasts to revel in their satisfaction, with classic advertisements, smoking celeb photographs, drawings, and fascinating observations on:

• The psychotherapeutic effect of cigarette as timepiece ("One more smoke, and then I'll pay the utilities bill.")
• The new brands and the old favorites
• Being a smoker in a nonsmoking world
• The classic smoker profile: the Marlboro Man, the American Spirit American, Joe Camel, the Gauloises Gal

And Much More!

They may bar you from restaurants. They may force you out into the cold, cold streets. But they will never rob you of . . . the joys of smoking cigarettes!

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780061252273
Publisher:	HarperCollins
Publication date:	09/18/2007
Edition description:	Revised ed.
Pages:	192
Product dimensions:	4.62(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.53(d)

Read an Excerpt

The Joys of Smoking Cigarettes

Chapter One

John Rolfe

In 1612, Captain John Rolfe produced the first successful tobacco crop in Virginia. John Rolfe was a farmer in the Jamestown settlement whose crops of tobacco became the economic basis for the colony. Known as an "ardent smoker," Rolfe was probably instrumental in importing tobacco seed from Trinidad between 1610 and 1611. He crossed the imported breed with the indigenous tobacco to produce a plant well adapted to the local soil and reportedly of pleasant taste. When the English cargo vessel Elizabeth sailed from Virginia on June 28, 1613, it presumably carried Rolfe's first tobacco crop for export. In April of the following year, John Rolfe married a sweet young Indian named Pocahontas in a Jamestown church. He died early in 1622. Within those ten short years, tobacco became the staple of the colonies, even though the motherland, England, was anxious to have the new provinces produce other commodities, such as flax, cotton, and indigo.

The revenues and profits from the "devil weed," as tobacco had come to be called, changed their minds, though. In 1622, Virginia exported sixty thousand pounds of tobacco from the colonies back to England. Nearly a hundred years later, the production level of export had risen to a whopping 50 million pounds and was still growing.

Rolfe may be considered the father of modern tobacco, through his aggressive sale and distribution of tobacco, but he was also anointed the economic savior of the colonies.

The Joys of Smoking Cigarettes. Copyright © by James Fitzgerald. Reprinted by permission of HarperCollins Publishers,Inc. All rights reserved. Available now wherever books are sold.

Table of Contents

Introduction     1
John Rolfe     9
BIC     10
Three on a Match     12
Smokers Around the World     14
The Conversation     16
A Special Cigarette Day     23
Moderate Smoker     28
Cat Tyc Profile     30
Billboards     34
Buying Cigarettes     37
American Spirit Profile     42
Camel Questions Game     44
Catherine Zeta-Jones     46
Christmas     48
Infamous Cigarette Smokers     50
Cigarette Pack     56
Elders     58
Benson & Hedges Profile     60
End of the Ritual     62
Peter Pavia Profile     64
Fieldstripping     67
Forbidden Places     71
The Indian Spirit     74
Joe Camel     77
The Little Man in the Red-and-Black Uniform     79
Drag     81
Camel Profile     83
Looking for Love     85
My Cigarette     88
Other Uses     90
Party Treat     94
Pets     95
LightingCigarettes     98
Marlboro Profile     102
Posing     104
Raymond Loewy     108
Rolling Your Own     109
Sean Penn     115
A Day Without     116
Carlton Profile     120
Slogans     122
Smoke Rings     124
Smokin' Behind Bars     127
Smokin' in Front of Bars     129
Smoking in Arabia     132
Salem Profile     134
A Ten-Day Smoking Program     136
Smokingdate.com     147
Television     148
Cigarettes and the Armed Forces     150
Winston Profile     155
Little Lady Lighting Her Eve     157
Those Darn Candy Cigarettes     159
One-Hand Johnny     161
An Old Indian Tradition     163
Weight Loss     165
Blowing Smoke     166
Tobacco as a Crop     167
People Who Never Smoked Cigarettes     169
Epilogue     170
An Abbreviated Smoking and Cigarette Glossary     175
Acknowledgments     181