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The Cigarette – a Political History On March 2019, writers Danuta Kean and Isobel de Vasconcellos released The Emilia Report <http://www.eilenedavidson.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/03/The-Emilia-Report.pdf>, comparing how 10 male and female writers received broadsheet coverage in the same book market necessary for literary recognition. Perhaps to no one’s surprise <https://www.theguardian.com/books/2019/mar/18/male-and-female-writers-media-coverage-reveals-marked-bias>, their survey uncovered that new books by men receive 56% of review coverage. Despite being bestselling authors, two female subjects received no coverage of their books in newspapers. This market bias against female writers certainly is nothing new. Indeed, England’s first published female poet — Emilia Bassano, whom the report is named after — struggled to sustain a living as a writer, received limited recognition, and was completely overshadowed by male poets. I bring up market bias and power balance to highlight the circumstances prior to the release of Sarah Milov’s book, *The Cigarette: A Political History* <https://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674241213&content=bios>, when historians N.D.B. Connolly and Edward Ayers appeared on NPR’s “Here and Now.” The show’s researchers heavily relied on Milov’s book as well as Nan Enstad’s *Cigarettes, Inc.: An Intimate History of Corporate Imperialism <https://www.press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/C/bo27540234.html>* for the segment. Though Connolly tweeted shout-outs to both women, neither one of them were mentioned in the segment – nor, for that matter, even invited to participate in a conversation that heavily built on their work. For Milov, a tenure-track professor at the University of Virginia, the omission meant her book was not marketed <https://lithub.com/historian-sarah-milov-wrote-a-book-so-good-that-three-men-on-npr-talked-about-it-without-naming-her/> to NPR’s five million listeners. Everyone involved apologized and explained that it was not malicious intent <https://www.bostonmagazine.com/news/2019/07/16/sarah-milov-wbur-credit/>, but omissions like this are an indication of a broader problem <https://historynewsnetwork.org/article/172594> that disproportionately tends to affect women. *The Cigarette* is a fascinating book on a quintessential American product. By looking beyond Big Tobacco, Milov illustrates surprising interconnections between twentieth-century social movements that coalesced around the cigarette, including environmentalists, activists, labor unions, tobacco farmers, and even cigarette manufacturers. Above all, this is an important book on the politics and power of citizen activism against industry doubt-mongering and government regulation that worked against citizens’ best interests. It’s also a stark reminder of the importance of elevating women historians and acknowledging gender disparities in how research is used and disseminated to the public — something that NPR is apparently closely examining <https://www.npr.org/sections/publiceditor/2019/07/17/742821803/history-minus-the-historian-herself> for its internal policies. https://nursingclio.org/2019/11/06/if-you-liked-this-interview-youll-love-this-book-a-review-of-sarah-milovs-the-cigarette-a-political-history-2019/ _________________________________________________________ Full posting guidelines at: http://www.marxmail.org/sub.htm Set your options at: https://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
