Smoking: The Artificial Passion

by David Krogh

Overview

What compels millions of people to ignore the medical evidence and continue smoking? David Krogh offers some fascinating and surprising answers in this critically acclaimed analysis of what doctors and scientists know about the passion for tobacco.

This feisty and provocative work gives smokers, ex-smokers, non-smokers, or anyone captivated by the quirkiness of human behavior a better understanding of this complex, deep-rooted habit--and in a broader context, drug use of any kind.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781466813915
Publisher:	Holt, Henry & Company, Inc.
Publication date:	09/15/1992
Sold by:	Macmillan
Format:	eBook
Pages:	176
File size:	231 KB

About the Author

David Krogh is a science writer and the director of communications for the Academic Senate of the University of California. While he has written on physics and technology, his main interest is biology, particularly its history and relationship to American culture. Krough has written several biology textbooks and study guides, as well as Smoking: The Artificial Passion.

Editorial Reviews

This study will be of enormous interest to the legions of smokers who have failed to give up cigarettes permanently, the estimated 75% of quitters who become re-addicted within a year. Krogh, staff member of the University of California Academic Center, here reviews the scientific literature to explain what motivates people to smoke--and, by extension, why stopping is extremely difficult. The book analyzes a complex of addiction and attachment factors:ok? personality, culture, genetics, neurobiology, pharmacology. Nicotine, we're told, does things for smokers; it stimulates the brain, helps concentration, is an aid in weight control, moderates moods (smokers, unlike other addicts, smoke to get ``medium''). But smoking also does things to smokers; it is controlling and it can be lethal. In offering advice on how to quit, Krogh, not surprisingly, can do little more than give encouragement. And his endorsement of nicotine gum as a crutch is questionable--its use is censured by the American Cancer Society's quit-smoking program, for one. (June)

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly

In this thoroughly researched yet entertaining book, journalist Krogh attempts to explain why people smoke, given the abundant documentation of attendant health hazards. He investigates physiological, pharmacological, sociological, and psychological responses to smoking, explaining each in simple, laypersons' terms. Krogh is adept at incorporating vast amounts of scientific evidence without weighing down his prose with dry data. He explores some alleged benefits of smoking (e.g., the paradox of smoking being both relaxing and mentally stimulating; the sex appeal of the smoker). His multifaceted approach offers fascinating reading. Having persuasively argued that the balance sheet for smoking is negative, he concludes with a fine chapter entitled ``Advice on Quitting.'' Highly recommended.-- Carol R. Glatt, VA Medical Ctr. Lib., Philadelphia

Library Journal