Smoke
A Global History of Smoking
Sander L. Gilman, Zhou XunSmoke: A Global History of Smoking examines the culture of smoking in different traditions and locations around the world. From opium dens in Victorian England to tobacco in Edo period Japan, and from ganja and cocaine to Havana cigars, this richly-illustrated volume encompasses the subject as no book has before.
Human beings have always smoked, and they probably always will. Every culture in recorded history has smoked something, whether as a cure or for pleasure, whether as part of a ritual or as an aspect of popular culture. It is curious, then, that no history of smoking has been written based on the assumption that smoking - in all of its forms and products - is a cultural phenomenon common to all human societies.
Smoke: A Global History of Smoking examines the culture of smoking in different traditions and locations around the world. From opium dens in Victorian England to tobacco in Edo period Japan, and from ganja and cocaine to Havana cigars, Smoke encompasses the subject as no book has before.
Based in cultural history, it employs a large number of images as part of its evidence: around 300 illustrations document smoking and smokers of many substances including tobacco, scented cigarettes, marijuana, opium and cocaine. The various essays examine the changing role of smoking in high and popular culture, ranging from images used in advertising to the legal and moral critiques of smoking, and from opera to the internet. Smoke will appeal to all those who smoke, all those who used to smoke, and all those who have tried, and failed, to give it up.
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This . . . fascinating book has opened my eyes. . .
'Beryl Bainbridge, The Times
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As with the best histories [Smoke] paints a vivid picture of times past into which smoking itself is just a lure.
'Glasgow Herald
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[Smoke] has many splendid and absorbing illustrations – pictures on nearly every page that range from smoking film stars, early advertising posters and ornate carved pipes, to beautiful full-colour reproductions of Western and Oriental art
'Sunday Telegraph
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There is . . . an undeniable pleasure to be taken in Smoke's copious visual material
'Jonathan Meades, London Evening Standard
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[A] remarkable collection of over 30 essays . . . it is beautifully produced and profusely illustrated . . . It is a real pleasure to recommend a book of true anthropological range and seriousness, conjuring, like the perfect smoke ring, the history of a universal human practice at a time when the issues raised . . . are at the forefront of current world-wide debates on health policy and social safety.
'British Medical Journal
Introduction – Sander L. Gilman and Zhou Xun
SMOKING IN HISTORY AND CULTURE
Ritual Smoking in Central America – Francis Robicsek
The Pleasures and Perils of Smoking in Early Modern England – Tanya Pollard
Smoking in Sub-Saharan Africa – Allen F. Roberts
Tobacco in Iran – Rudi Matthee
Smoking and Ayurvedic Medicine in India – P. Ram Manohar
Tobacco Culture in Japan – Barnabas Tatsuya Suzuki
Smoking in Imperial China – Timothy Brook
Tobacco in Edo Period Japan – Timon Screech
How Do We Smoke? Accessories and Utensils – Ben Rapaport
The Belle Epoque of Opium - Jos Ten Berge
The Opium Den in Victorian London – Barry Milligan
Smoking and Sociability – Matthew Hilton
Havana Cigars and the West's Imagination – Jean Stubbs
A Century of Kretek – Mark Hanusz
Ganja in Jamaica – J. Edward Chamberlin and Barry Chevannes
Smoking and All That Jazz – Stephen Cottrell
Smoking in Modern China – Zhou Xun
Smoking in Modern Japan – Daniel Gilman
Cigarettes in Soviet and post-Soviet Central Asia – Ruth Mandel
The Cocaine Experience – Alberto Castoldi
Smoking & Sociability
SMOKING IN ART AND LITERATURE
Symbol and Image: Smoking in Art since the Seventeenth Century – Benno Tempel
The Houkah in the Harem: On Smoking and Orientalist Art – Ivan Davidson Kalmar
Smoking in Opera – Linda Hutcheon and Michael Hutcheon
In Praise of Lady Nicotine: A Bygone Era of Prose, Poetry…and Presentation – Eugene Umberger
Cinematic Smoke: From Weimar to Hollywood – Noah Isenberg
Emblems of Emptiness: Smoking as a Way of Life in Jean Eustache's La Maman et la Putain – Dawn Marlan
Smoking & Art
SMOKING, GENDER AND ETHNICITY
Jews and Smoking – Sander L. Gilman
The Commodified African American in Nineteenth-Century Tobacco Art – Dolores Mitchell
Women and Nineteenth-Century Images of Smoking – Dolores Mitchell
Toward a Queer History of Smoking – Robyn L. Schiffman
Gender & Ethnicity
SMOKING: THE 'BURNING ISSUE'
Why Do We Smoke?: The Physiology of Smoking – Leslie Iverson
Smoking, Science and Medicine – John Welshman
Engineering Consumer Confidence in the Twentieth Century – Allan M. Brandt
Marlboro Man and the Stigma of Smoking – Patrick W. Corrigan
Smoking & Advertising
References
Select Bibliography
Contributors
Photographic Acknowledgements
Index
Sander L. Gilman (Author)
Sander L. Gilman is Distinguished Professor of the Liberal Arts and Sciences as well as Professor of Psychiatry at Emory University. A cultural and literary historian, he is the author or editor of more than ninety books.
Zhou Xun (Author)
Zhou Xun is Reader in Modern History at the University of Essex. She has published widely on health, nutrition and ethnicity, and her latest book is The People’s Health: Health Intervention and Delivery in Mao’s China, 1949-1983 (2020). She is also co-editor of Smoke: A Global History of Smoking (Reaktion, 2004).
