Books, Arts & Manners: Up in Smoke

Thank You for Smoking, by Christopher Buckley (Random House, 272 pp., $22)

IN THE daily melodramas of Washington life—at least the stock versions offered by the hometown paper and the network news—the plots are predictable and the characters easy to read. We have good guys (public-interest lawyers, environmentalists, idealistic congressmen calling for an “expanded federal role”), and we have bad guys (pro-lifers, Second Amendment enthusiasts, people with Pentagon contracts). And then we have the really, really bad guys: the publicists, talking heads, and spinmeisters of the Tobacco Institute, the infamous lobbying arm of the tobacco industry.

About the Author

Andrew Ferguson

Andrew Ferguson, a former columnist for NR, is a contributing writer at The Atlantic and a fellow at the American Enterprise Institute.

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Thank You for Smoking, by Christopher Buckley (Random House, 272 pp., $22)

IN THE daily melodramas of Washington life—at least the stock versions offered by the hometown paper and the network news—the plots are predictable and the characters easy to read. We have good guys (public-interest lawyers, environmentalists, idealistic congressmen calling for an “expanded federal role”), and we have bad guys (pro-lifers, Second Amendment enthusiasts, people with Pentagon contracts). And then we have the really, really bad guys: the publicists, talking heads, and spinmeisters of the Tobacco Institute, the infamous lobbying arm of the tobacco industry.