A LONG WAY, BABY

By ELIZABETH GLEICK

These days hardly a week goes by without a news flash involving the tobacco industry. High-stakes lawsuits, whistleblowers, wily marketing men, political palm greasing, intimations of perjury, perfidy and double-dealing--the story has got it all. But lost in the hurly-burly of breaking news is a sense of historical perspective: the tale of the cigarette has, in fact, always had it all.

That long view has now been provided by the cartonload in Ashes to Ashes (Knopf; 807 pages; $35), Richard Kluger's monumental history of the cigarette, ambitiously subtitled America's Hundred-Year Cigarette War, the Public Health, and the Unabashed Triumph of Philip Morris. Beginning with the tobacco plant itself--how and where it is grown and harvested--Kluger covers virtually every aspect of the American tobacco industry up to the present, making detours along the way into such topics as antitrust law and the marketing of Miller beer. Seven years in the making but now--luckily for the author--remarkably timely, Ashes to Ashes will probably be the definitive volume on the subject of cigarettes in the 20th century.

The great pleasure of this elegantly written book lies in the details. There really was, for instance, a camel named Old Joe. Photographed in 1913 when the Barnum and Bailey circus showed up in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, the truculent beast solved a package-design problem for Reynolds executives, who were unhappy with their illustrated camel. A few decades later, publicity-minded Reynolds honchos were actually delighted by the controversy over their ungrammatical slogan, "Winston tastes good--like a cigarette should."

The early days of the industry--an era populated by ruthless and colorful Southern businessmen consumed by the vision of a cigarette in every mouth--were particularly lively. And the author manages to generate genuine suspense as he recounts stories of how now familiar brands were developed, even though the outcomes are well known. Is the word baby too demeaning to include in the Virginia Slims ad campaign, as in "You've Come a Long Way, Baby"? What sort of fellow would make the best Marlboro Man?

Unfortunately, the great drawback of this book also lies in the details: at just over 800 pages, Kluger tells far more than the average, or even the very motivated, reader can possibly want to know. Marginal characters receive brief biographical treatment, and the sheer volume of scientific data and tales of breaucratic maneuvering is overwhelming.

Yet despite the strands of health, public policy and finance that the author must weave together, Kluger never loses sight of his big tapestry. All his evidence points one way: the purveyors of "death, disease and deception," as former Surgeon General C. Everett Koop routinely called the tobacco executives, consistently and stubbornly disregarded the hard scientific research showing a link between smoking and disease. By doing so, they backed themselves into the corner where they find themselves today, unable to admit to safety concerns or improve their product for fear of lawsuits. Here's just one grotesque example out of hundreds Kluger discovered: in 1971, when Philip Morris chairman Joseph Cullman was confronted with studies showing that pregnant women who smoke have low birthweight babies, he replied, "Some women would prefer having smaller babies."

While plainly outraged by the conduct of the cigarette makers, Kluger spreads the blame around. Lawmakers, cozy with tobacco interests, are held responsible for the government's failure to regulate a clearly dangerous product. The antismoking lobby, in its zeal to get its message across, is portrayed as stooping to hasty or manipulative presentation of scientific data. Meanwhile, the American Medical Association comes across as shockingly slow to denounce smoking. To end the present standoff, in which tobacco companies are battling huge lawsuits, Kluger proposes a compromise in which the industry submits to fda regulation of cigarettes in return for immunity from legal liability.

Hardy souls who crave still more detail on the current tobacco wars may want to dip into The Cigarette Papers (University of California Press; 539 pages; $29.95), a new study of the Brown & Williamson documents that were leaked to antismoking activist Stanton Glantz. Next month will also see the publication of Smokescreen: The Truth Behind the Tobacco Industry Cover-Up (Addison-Wesley; 288 pages; $22) by New York Times reporter Philip J. Hilts.

But Kluger tells tobacco's story very effectively. As one scientist scolded a group of researchers bought and paid for by the tobacco industry more than 20 years ago: "It shocks me that ...you have not joined the community of men." Until the tobacco industry joins that community, Kluger suggests, the greatest preventable scourge of public health in the modern era will continue unabated.