Proctor pulls no punches in his 600 page depiction of the cigarette industry. He paints cigarette manufacturing as an industry that addicts over 80 percent of its users, kills half the people who use the product as directed, kills 400,000 Americans each year, kills 50,000 Americans a year through second-hand smoke, corrupts science, corrupts government, and corrupts the legal profession. Still, it is a legal industry. American addiction to cigarettes began in the early 20th Century with the advent of the match, an instant flame. Most of the book concentrates on the cigarette industry’s campaign of denial beginning in 1953. Proctor is a graduate of Southwest High School in Kansas City, Missouri, and is currently a professor of the history of science at Stanford. The book is scholarly and well documented. It is a compelling plea for the eradication of cigarettes and the abolition of a sinister industry.