Description

Youll inhale this tellall book about the tobacco industry and never look at a No Smoking sign the same way again
Margaret Atwood via Twitter

Mad Men meets Bad Blood in this addictive behindthescenes globetrotting narrative of moral ambiguity law public policy and big tobacco

Given everything the lawyer knew up to that point about smoking as far as he could tell cigarettes shouldnt even have been available as a mass market product

Its the start of the new millennium and a young lawyer is recruited to work for an unnamed multinational company It isnt until his second interview that the product the company produces is revealed to him cigarettesPossibly the most controversial consumer product in human history seductive addictive and deadlyyet completely legal Over the next decade he travels the world as he works as legal counsel to help successfully market cigarettes in dozens of countries

Firebrand ventures into the heart of the tobacco industry and the icy paradoxes of capitalism each chapter a counterintuitive lesson on how cigarette companiesthe target of increasingly intense antismoking campaigns and government regulations including the 1964 Surgeon Generals Report and 200billiondollar debt of the 1998 Master Settlement Agreementcontinue to pivot and thrive in the 21st century inhaling profits from their one billion smokers worldwide

As Mad Men did for the alcoholfueled oversexed corrupt world of New York advertising Firebrand does for the even more despised world of big tobacco in an addictive behindthescenes piece of storytelling The lawyers work takes him from manufacturing factories to hocking sticks at UK corner store counters from tacky resorts in Spain and pirate citystates to luxury hotels and Grand Prix events across European and Asian citiesA contemporary tale of our ambiguous times told with characterbased drive and dry humour Firebrand is a grand tour of the compelling paradoxes of globalization and corporate culture shrinkwrapped in an engrossing narrative of a morally dubious yet completely legal enterprise

This is storytelling at its best Wry observation compelling narrative fascinating characters pageturning writing and an ageold question driving it all
Joel Bakan author of The New Corporation How Good Corporations are Bad for Democracy