Tobacco Articles: category books

Furore over puffing French general's photo in book

Thu, 19 Jun 2008 04:00:00 GMT

Panaji: Smoking Picture in SSC Text Book Irks NOTE

office@daijiworld.com — Thu, 19 Jun 2008 04:00:00 GMT

: A picture of French commander Henry Navare smoking cigarette in the tenth standard book of National Council of Educational Research and Training (NCERT) has irked the anti-tobacco non-government organization (NGO). The National Organisation for Tobacco Eradication (NOTE), an anti-tobacco NGO, has expressed shock and pain to find the illustration of a smoking man in the social science text book prescribed by NCERT for class tenth in the State. The NGO has pointed out that history lesson number two on nationalist movement in Indo-China in its sub-chapter 'The Communist Movements and Vietnamese Nationalism' has shown French commander Henry Navare puffing a cigarette.

Furore over puffing French general’s photo in book

Thu, 19 Jun 2008 04:00:00 GMT

A photograph of a late French general smoking cigarette published in a social science book of the National Council of Educational Research and Training (NCERT) has caused the anti-tobacco activists to up their ante. The National Organization for Tobacco Eradication (NOTE), a Goa based non-profit organisation, has written to the NCERT, the World Health Organisation (WHO) and the Goa government demanding withdrawal of the controversial photograph from the class 10 textbook. On page 44 on the chapter "The Communist Movement and Vietnamese Nationalism", the late French general Henry Navare is shown smoking a cigarette. “I am astonished to see such a mistake committed by an institution like NCERT," NOTE general secretary Shekhar Salkar told IANS. “The picture of a military man smoking projects a macho man image. This will be read by millions of students and this will definitely have a negative impact on students," Salkar added.

Up in Smoke: Book Review - 'When You Are Engulfed in Flames,' by David Sedaris

Sun, 15 Jun 2008 04:00:00 GMT

Even if you disregard the van Gogh cover sketch of a skeleton smoking a cigarette, it’s difficult to miss that “When You Are Engulfed in Flames” is a book about David Sedaris’s midlife crisis. . . . With Sedaris in this state of mind, the centerpiece of the book should have been an obvious gimme: a diary of his quest to quit smoking. Even in a more frivolous mood, Sedaris on kicking the habit — he smoked Kool Milds for about 30 years, and his mother died of lung cancer — should be pretty much the best thing ever, like Evelyn Waugh returning to tell us his thoughts on MySpace. Sixteen of the 22 stories in this volume were previously published in The New Yorker, which doesn’t detract from the overall experience since Sedaris is better on a second reading. But in the case of “The Smoking Section,” the deft abridgment in the magazine last month was almost more satisfying than the original. Here the 83-page story is cut into three parts — before, during and after — and while the first section zooms off the page, once Sedaris stops smoking it’s as if he has lost his muse.

The Leonard Lopate Show: David Sedaris: When You Are Engulfed in Flames

Thu, 05 Jun 2008 04:00:00 GMT

[Sedaris talks of quitting because all the hotels, and France and Italy, had no-smoking policies; Lopate talks of quitting also.]

Bless David Sedaris and Leonard Lopate and congratulations on giving up smoking. A colleague of mine recently died of lung cancer. . . . not even middle aged yet even.

Dr. Snyderman sounds off in 'Medical Myths'

hbenson@sfchronicle.com — Fri, 30 May 2008 04:00:00 GMT

As a corrective measure, the cancer surgeon and former Bay Area television medical reporter - now well known to national audiences as chief medical editor of NBC News - has written a concise and opinionated new book. The title alone is a grabber: "Medical Myths That Can Kill You: And the 101 Truths That Will Save, Extend and Improve Your Life" (Crown; 288 pages; $24.95). . . . 10 truths Dr. Nancy Snyderman holds these to be self-evident: . . . 7. Smokers are more depressed than nonsmokers. Tobacco may interfere with the uptake of brain chemicals.

Looking Back at James Bond's Origins as the Franchise Continues With a New Novel

Sun, 01 Jun 2008 04:00:00 GMT

IAN FLEMING, had he lived, would have celebrated his 100th birthday on Wednesday. James Bond, his greatest invention, is probably a bit younger, strictly speaking (the evidence in the books is a little contradictory) — except that Bond, of course, is ageless and immortal. Never mind those three packs a day; he has wind to spare. . . . Albert R. Broccoli, a producer of the first 17 Bond films, could be said to be a co-creator of this other, meta-Bond. It was he or his writers who made a trademark of the “Bond. James Bond” line, for example, and who insisted on the “shaken, not stirred” business. Fleming’s Bond is not nearly so fussy about what he drinks, as long as there is plenty of it. He’s as apt to slug down bourbon as a martini. This Bond is also much more fetishistic about smoking than he is about drinking and makes a point of ordering his cigarettes (with three gold bands on the filter) from Morlands of Grosvenor Street. (In a pinch, though, he’ll also smoke Chesterfield kings by the carton, and it’s little short of miraculous that he can climb a flight of stairs, let alone swim for miles, as he so often does.)

The matchless David Sedaris quits smoking in 'Flames'

Thu, 22 May 2008 04:00:00 GMT

When You Are Engulfed in Flames (Little, Brown, $25.99) The book What it's about: The humorist's sixth collection of essays, including an account of his attempt to quit smoking. . . . Memorable line: "I hated leaving a hole in the smoking world, and so I recruited someone to take my place." . . . On quitting smoking: "I know if I picked up a cigarette, I'd be right back. I don't think about it unless I'm passing someone who is smoking. Gosh, that smells good. It would be harder if I still drank."

When You Are Engulfed in Flames: David Sedaris

Thu, 15 May 2008 04:00:00 GMT

This title will be released on June 3, 2008. . . . Culminating in a brilliant account of his venture to Tokyo in order to quit smoking, David Sedaris's sixth essay collection is a new masterpiece of comic writing from "a writer worth treasuring" (Seattle Times).

Nuala O'Faolain; Irish Writer Illuminated Female Isolation

Mon, 12 May 2008 04:00:00 GMT

Nuala O'Faolain, 68, an Irish journalist who in midlife turned an introduction to a collection of columns into a best-selling memoir and then quickly wrote a novel, another memoir and a biography, died of cancer May 10 at the Blackrock Hospice in Dublin. . . . She also began a long-term but ultimately unsatisfying relationship with a man whom she followed to London. There, she became a BBC producer, making community access programs, traveling extensively, writing and teaching. Her relationship ended and, drinking and smoking heavily, she returned to Ireland in 1977

The Red Leather Diary - - First Chapter

Sun, 11 May 2008 04:00:00 GMT

For more than half a century, its tarnished latch unlocked, the red leather diary lay silent inside an old steamer trunk strewn with vintage labels evoking the glamorous age of ocean-liner travel. "This book belongs to," reads the frontispiece, followed by "Florence Wolfson" scrawled in faded black ink. Inside, in brief, breathless dispatches written on gold-edged pages, the journal recorded five years in the life and times of a smart and headstrong New York teenager, a young woman who loved Baudelaire, Central Park, and men and women with equal abandon. . . . The diary’s “Memoranda” section included pages for “Birthdays and Anniversaries” and “Christmas Cards Sent.” The “Index of Important Events” was only “to be used to schedule outstanding occurrences.” It revealed the roller coaster that was Florence’s emotional life. Fire in old house, February 14, 1927 My first dance, December 30, 1929 My first cigarette, January 12, 1930

Who Do You Think You Are? - Alyse Myers: - Book Review -

Sun, 04 May 2008 04:00:00 GMT

WHO DO YOU THINK YOU ARE? A Memoir. By Alyse Myers. 250 pp. Touchstone/Simon & Schuster. $24. . . . Myers, who is vice president for brand programs at The New York Times, grew up in a working-class neighborhood in Queens during the 1960s and ’70s, the eldest of three girls who shared a bedroom in an apartment so claustrophobic the changing world outside barely registered. Her mother’s constant smoking was as inescapable as the terrible rows her parents engaged in, unaware or uncaring of the traumatizing effects on their daughters. . . . It’s only when she has a daughter of her own that Myers begins to understand and respect her mother’s efforts to survive. And when her mother is dying of lung cancer, Myers begins to recognize her own lack of compassion.

Tony Horwitz's Book 'A Voyage Long and Strange' Looks for Little-Known Stories of American History

Wed, 30 Apr 2008 04:00:00 GMT

Tony Horwitz’s new book, “A Voyage Long and Strange,” is about the American history most Americans never learned, including the story of the short-lived, early-17th-century colony established on this windswept island eight miles west of Martha’s Vineyard. The book starts with the Viking discovery of North America, dispels a number of myths about Columbus (a much lousier navigator than we were taught) and then traces the various Spanish and French explorations of America before turning to the English settlements at Jamestown and Plymouth. . . . The Indians who met them on Cuttyhunk were "exceeding courteous, gentle of disposition and well conditioned," and made a very favorable impression, especially the women. "This is the rare story of gentle first contact between Europeans and Native Americans," Mr. Horwitz said. "Some of the other stories are pretty bleak. But here you get these wonderful details like 'drinking tobacco' together and descriptions of the natives as very 'witty.'"

Simon Gray has lung cancer but won't stop smoking

Thu, 24 Apr 2008 04:00:00 GMT

The Last Cigarette, Simon Gray's memoir about giving up smoking - or, rather, musing about one day quitting since by page 243 his ashtray still overfloweth - ends with an arresting postscript. "I have a tumour in my lung... absolutely certainly, one way or another, I'm coming up to the last cigarette." There is a burning inevitability, of course, that a habit begun aged 7, pursued tirelessly, heroically even, through past health horrors including aneurysms and prostate cancer, peaking at 65 fags a day, would get him in the end. Still, those of us who loved Gray's previous two volumes of The Smoking Diaries for their comic shambling and twinkling self-deprecation had hoped that he might, after all, prove the fag packet warnings wrong. At least now after radiotherapy, with more next month for a secondary tumour on his neck, Gray has finally given up trying to give up. "I don't think I'd survive long without smoking," he says. "I think I'm an addictive personality. And that is my addiction. I don't think anything can replace smoking." Besides, he now fears that quitting itself might kill him: a film director friend attributes a recent heart attack to packing in after a lifetime. . . . I expect him to eulogise about cigarettes, the rituals and paraphernalia. Instead Gray sees smoking as as much a weakness as a pleasure. He can understand the smoking ban, just wishes it was less authoritarian, permitted, perhaps, at certain fag-friendly restaurants. But he has controlled his own habit enough to get through dinner without sparking up on pavements. "At times I'm very grateful for cigarettes. It means one's life is run on a system of small rewards. You feel that you've earned a cigarette." He regrets, however, that he has passed his habit down to his two children, both in their forties

Doubt is Their Product: How Industry's Assault on Science Threatens Your Health

Fri, 18 Apr 2008 04:00:00 GMT

"In Doubt Is Their Product, David Michaels gives a lively and convincing history of how clever public relations has blocked one public health protection after another. The techniques first used to reassure us about tobacco were adapted to reassure us about asbestos, lead, vinyl chloride-and risks to nuclear facilities workers, where Dr. Michaels' experience as the relevant Assistant Secretary of Energy gave him an inside view.

"Doubt is our product," a cigarette executive once observed, "since it is the best means of competing with the 'body of fact' that exists in the minds of the general public. It is also the means of establishing a controversy." In this eye-opening expose, David Michaels reveals how the tobacco industry's duplicitous tactics spawned a multimillion dollar industry that is dismantling public health safeguards. Product defense consultants, he argues, have increasingly skewed the scientific literature