Clever Geek Handbook
7 January 2026

Power and Plenty

Recommendation

Thinking of globalization as a new phenomenon or an inevitable one is all too easy. As scholars Ronald Findlay and Kevin O’Rourke explain in this thorough examination, globalization is neither new nor predictable. In fact, international trade has been a reality for more than 1,000 years and the story of global commerce is one of constant change. For centuries, nations have jockeyed for position, imposed rules and killed each other’s citizens in the name of trade. This enlightening work rewards the reader with a depth of understanding and context. However, it would benefit from a more conversational, less academic tone. BooksInShort recommends it to readers who want to see world economic affairs in a broader context and perspective.

Take-Aways

  • Contemporary globalization is the product of a long, chaotic process of economic development, war, and cultural and social upheaval.
  • At the beginning of the second millennium, the Islamic world was the globe’s leading economic power.
  • The Crusades introduced Europeans to sophisticated tools, such as Arabic numerals.
  • For much of the past 1,000 years, goods traveled by two routes: over land or water.
  • Trade routes from China to Europe were complicated by the dangers of crossing Central Asia. The Pax Mongolica allowed for unfettered movement of goods.
  • Mongol armies harnessed a new technology – horses – to control much of the world.
  • Iberian explorers in the 15th and 16th centuries opened the new world as a source of gold and cattle hides.
  • European colonizers used the brutal strategies of plunder and slavery to build their empires.
  • The Industrial Revolution led to growth in both population and living standards.
  • Uneven patterns of globalization make international trade’s future difficult to predict.

Summary

From Modest Beginnings to Soaring Heights

As China and India boom, and as the world economy becomes ever more intertwined, globalization looks like a recent phenomenon. This is a shortsighted view of world history. Global trade has existed for centuries, always shaped by political, economic and social upheavals. Countless wars have raged over trade. Even in the year 1000, global trade was a reality. At that time, eight regions participated in international trade to varying degrees:

  1. Western Europe – The region’s geographic advantages made it the envy of the world. It had the highest ratio of coastline to land mass, vast swaths of arable land and numerous navigable rivers. While geographic boundaries, such as the Alps, made the region difficult to unite, the Roman Catholic Church pulled it together culturally. With swords and slaves (until the Slavs converted to Christianity and were no longer seen as trade goods) as its primary exports, it evolved into the major force in international trade.
  2. Eastern Europe – This area, including Russia, Belarus, Ukraine and Turkey, had a more extreme climate and topography than Western Europe. The Byzantine Empire and the Greek Orthodox Church shaped its culture. Its prime exports were slaves, silver and furs. Its 1,000-year economic development followed an uneven path.
  3. North Africa and Southwest Asia – The dry Middle East includes Egypt, the Arabian Peninsula, the Iranian plateau and Afghanistan. It forms the heart of Islam. The Arab world clearly was the hub of trade at the turn of the first millennium. Its exports included spices, silver, textiles, warhorses and pepper. When it failed to keep pace with technological advances, other areas surpassed it. Oil has returned it to prominence.
  4. Sub-Saharan Africa – This region exported gold, ivory and rice, but its major export was slaves. The slave trade predated European exploitation. Slaves from Sub-Saharan Africa arrived in the Middle East before Islam existed. Stunted by slavery and colonialism, this remains the world’s least economically developed area.
  5. Central Asia – This 6,000-mile-wide region stretches from Russia in the west to China in the east, encompassing Mongolia. Long a pivotal axis for east-west trade, Central Asia traded silver, slaves and horses. Once crucial to global trade, it’s now a backwater.
  6. South Asia – The Himalayas separate this region from Central Asia. Historically, it exported spices, textiles and teak. In the past millennium, India, which dominates the region, became a British colony, threw off colonialism and grew a vibrant economy.
  7. Southeast Asia – This rainy, fertile agricultural area includes Thailand, Laos, Vietnam and the Philippines. Over the millennia, it sold spices, rice, perfumes and teak.
  8. East Asia – This vast, populous region includes China, Korea and Japan. Even as early as A.D. 1000, it already had seen various dynasties emerge and dissolve. Exports included silk, tea, porcelain and copper. Japan and Korea long have been prosperous nations, and China is poised to become the world’s leading economic power.
“Contemporary globalization, and its economic and political consequences, have [arisen] from a worldwide process of uneven economic development that has been...millennia in the making.”

Clearly, global trade flourished even in the first millennium, but it was not a seamless process. Goods moved around the globe by land or by sea. Across vast Central Asia, looters threatened overland trading. Ships relied on the prevailing winds, which tended to blow from the southwest in the summer and from the northeast during the winter. Shipments of cargo destined for the world market were at the mercy of the wind and weather. The narrow passages through the Red Sea and past Indonesia also made ships susceptible to the taxation whims of local authorities.

1000-1500: “Pax Mongolica” and Black Death

During this period, the Muslim world led commerce and technology. The Crusades, which created protracted conflict between Christians and Muslims, spurred the transfer of technology from East to West. Arabic numerals replaced Roman numerals, giving European entrepreneurs more sophisticated record keeping. Traveling to China, explorer Marco Polo was awed by its wealth and huge shipments of spices. Overland trade from Europe to the Far East became safer in the early 13th century, when the Mongols took over a huge swath of the globe. Led by Gengis Khan, they invaded China in 1211. To exert control, the Mongols slaughtered millions of Chinese. Gengis died in 1227, but his descendants carried on, invading Hungary in 1241.

“The period from the middle of the 17th century to the early 19th century saw a prolonged struggle among the leading European powers to control the resources, territory and trade of the New World.”

At its peak, the Mongol empire included China, Iraq, Iran and much of Russia. The Mongols owed their victories to horsemanship. Mustering 100,000 soldiers for major battles, Gengis Khan’s army was relatively small, but it mustered some 20 million horses, so the Mongol invaders always had rested steeds for their battles. Once the Mongols controlled Central Asia’s steppes, security no longer posed a problem for overland trade routes. In fact, Mongolian rule eased the way for global trade and created a 100-year Pax Mongolica. The Mongols wanted safe routes so they could collect taxes on the traffic. Once trade was secure, prices fell, so traders could buy Chinese silk and sell it in Italy for three times its cost. When the Mongol empire disintegrated in the 1330s, overland trade once again became perilous.

“The Golden Age of Islam stimulated trade with Western Europe.”

As Mongol dominance paved the way for trade, it also created an efficient way for germs to travel to new places. This era of global disease spawned the Black Plague, which killed nearly a third of Europe’s population from 1348 to 1351, and decimated Egypt and Syria. The Plague roiled labor markets and national economies. In much of Europe, the population decline caused wages to increase and land values to fall. This labor shortage spurred technological advances, such as Johannes Gutenberg’s printing press. European living standards rose, and Western Europe transformed from a minor player in international trade into a major force. The competing Italian ports of Venice and Genoa dominated European trade during the 14th and 15th centuries.

1500-1650: The Rise of Iberia and the Netherlands

Although the Italian city-states dominated European trade as the 16th century began, Spain and Portugal led the opening of new global trade routes to Africa and North America. Seafaring exploration gave the expansion-minded Portuguese – hemmed in by the Atlantic Ocean and Spain – a way to broaden their power. Unhindered by moral misgivings, the Portuguese sold African slaves in Europe and captured Canary Islands natives to toil as sugar farmers. The Portuguese were equally brutal in other spheres. They monopolized the Indian Ocean spice trade by imposing taxes on Muslim traders and ships, treating those who didn’t pay as enemy combatants. The Portuguese plundered the Indian subcontinent. These strategies could not be sustained forever, yet the Portuguese mindset allowed no other approach. The Spaniards pioneered transatlantic trade routes that reaped, first, gold, and then a growing trade in animal hides, dyes and other products.

“Europe was no longer a peripheral player on the margins of Eurasia, but had become the center of the new world economic system.”

The late 1500s saw the rise of the Netherlands as a trading power. Thanks to their maritime expertise and mercantile zeal, the Dutch quickly rose to prominence in international trade. Like their Iberian counterparts, they had few qualms about ruling by force. As a governor of the Dutch East Indies Company famously said, “We cannot make war without trade nor trade without war.” Taking this edict seriously, Holland built a huge lead in international trade and invested heavily in military might, raising large sums from taxes to defend itself against Spain. The rise of the Dutch, and then the English, put an end to Venice and Genoa as the major ports of entry for Asian goods.

1650-1780: Mercantilism and the Rise of Britain

During this century-plus period, Britain, the Netherlands, Spain, Portugal and France battled for supremacy over the Americas. Britain was ambitious and aggressive about broadening its empire. It started close to home, colonizing neighboring Ireland after Queen Elizabeth I labeled it, “rude and barbarous.” England continued to plunder the New World, taking over Jamaica and turning it into a profitable sugar plantation staffed by African slaves. Economist Adam Smith argued that Britain lost money on this colony, but that doesn’t stand up to scrutiny. In fact, Britain enjoyed a 10% rate of return from its Jamaican sugar operations. British leaders weren’t so sure about the colonies in New England, which Oliver Cromwell called, “a cold, poor and useless place,” but the Pilgrims who settled there soon developed a diverse economy based on corn, furs, fishing and shipbuilding.

“The century that followed the final defeat of Napoleon saw the world’s economic structure transformed in so radical a manner that it would have been virtually unrecognizable to a late-18th-century observer.”

As Britain’s economy improved, its tensions with the Dutch heightened. England and the Netherlands were culturally similar Protestant countries, but competition over trade proved more powerful than religious ties, and three Anglo-Dutch wars broke out in 1652, 1665 and 1672. Trade compromises resolved the disputes. With the growing importance of the New World, the balance of economic power shifted to Europe, although China gained economic health and replaced some of the population it lost to the Pax Mongolica. During the “Pax Manchurica,” China’s population soared from 126 million in 1680 to 412 million in 1850.

The Industrial Revolution

Schoolchildren learn about the Industrial Revolution as an era of sweeping, rapid change during which Europe’s quality of life accelerated. They also learn from Charles Dickens and other writers that the Industrial Revolution was a time of poverty and suffering. While academics have debated whether the Industrial Revolution was truly revolutionary, the facts show that the years from 1760 to 1830 set the stage for decades of sustained economic growth worldwide. While overall growth was slow, it rocketed in crucial areas, such as iron, coal and textiles. The cotton industry, in particular, profited from impressive, fast-paced technological advances. During the Plague, the way of life improved only when population dropped, but Britain’s Industrial Revolution brought an unusual combination of rising population and better living standards.

1780-1914: Steamships and Trains Boost Trade

Political squabbles in the late 18th and early 19th centuries created major setbacks for world trade. In 1792 and 1793, France launched wars against Austria, Prussia and Britain. The war with Britain, in particular, disrupted trade, as both nations imposed trade bans on each other. Such disputes continued until 1815, when the European nations called a truce, and returned to the business of colonizing and globalizing. The Industrial Revolution led to the invention of steamships, larger and less reliant on the weather than sailing ships. In 1869, the opening of the Suez Canal cut nearly 4,000 miles off the trade routes between Asia and Europe. The advent of the railroad was another seminal event for world trade. Steamships and trains lowered the cost of transporting goods, which increased the volume of trade. The wealth of grains and other commodities arriving from abroad lowered British food prices. During the 19th century, international trade transformed from a small-scale endeavor into a massive flow of goods.

1914-1939: Great War, Great Depression

Just as the European wars in the late 18th century crippled global trade, so too did World War I. Again, technology played a major role. While the British maintained naval superiority and blockaded Germany, the Germans used submarines to impose a counterblockade. Though the war disrupted commerce, many economies boomed. With European agriculture stymied, farmers in other regions flourished. Wheat from the U.S., beef from Argentina, and sugar from Cuba and Java picked up the slack. However, the end of the war brought more turmoil. With Europe back on track, lower demand for their crops damaged farmers in the U.S., Cuba and Java. Economic struggles led to protectionist policies in the U.S. and elsewhere. When the Great Depression hit in 1929, protectionism only accelerated, further destabilizing international commodity markets.

1945 and After: “Reglobalization” Takes Hold

World War II also was hugely disruptive to world trade. Many governments actively sought to hinder trade. The war even hurt uninvolved regions, such as Latin America, since the crucial European market no longer accepted imports. The postwar period saw the return of liberal trade policies in the U.S. and Europe, but globalization proceeded only in fits and starts. Communist regimes that were openly hostile to trade controlled huge parts of the globe. For decades after WWII, the USSR and China would not trade with capitalist economies. Moreover, the European powers lost many former colonies (India, Indochina, Indonesia), so they could no longer take trade with them for granted. However, many former colonial satellites re-entered world markets by the beginning of the 21st century. India and China became vigorous players. Proponents of globalization often assume that ever-liberalizing trade is part of the natural order. But as history shows, international commerce never proceeds in even, predictable patterns. Instead, globalization always has been followed by periods of “deglobalization” and “reglobalization.”

About the Authors

Ronald Findlay is a professor of economics at Columbia University and the author of Factor Proportions, Trade, and Growth. Kevin H. O’Rourke is a professor of economics at Trinity College, Dublin, and a co-author of Globalization and History.

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Power and Plenty

Book Power and Plenty

Trade, War, and the World Economy in the Second Millennium (Princeton Economic History of the Western World)

Princeton UP,
 


7 January 2026

Business Strategy

Recommendation

In this book, Jeremy Kourdi and the Economist survey the material you might cover in an M.B.A. course on corporate strategy. The book's 13 chapters are grouped into two parts. The first section, “The forces at work,” illustrates the factors working on your business that affect its ability to function, grow and compete. The second part, “Making it happen: concepts and tools for strategic decision-making,” shows you how to use various analytical tools to help your company. The range of topics is broad, so the text is concise of necessity. The downside is that the treatment of each topic is not particularly deep, though it is solid. If this alerts you to a subject of particular interest, you may have to seek greater depth and innovation elsewhere. Still, the information here will help you think about your processes and methods. BooksInShort says you can rely on this accurate and well-organized compendium.

Take-Aways

  • Understand your competitive environment. Then, use any strategic management theory that suits your situation.
  • Most bad decisions can be traced back to a sloppy decision-making process.
  • Plotting scenarios can help you prepare for forces that may affect your company’s future.
  • Michael Porter’s five-forces tool and SWOT analysis are popular because they work.
  • Learn more about what your company knows and where the knowledge resides.
  • Study your customers. Give them what they want before they want it.
  • Business ratios give you the best analysis of trends affecting your market.
  • People you involve in the decision-making process will be more committed to the decision.
  • Lead your workforce the way you would want to be led.
  • Leadership is a lot about who you truly are.

Summary

Simple But Not Simplistic

Just as it is impossible to describe all of a river’s currents and eddies, it is very difficult for you to assess all the forces acting on your business. Many of these forces appear contradictory or paradoxical. Globalization is an important force, but so is awareness of local culture. For example, think of DaimlerChrysler’s German versus American internal conflicts. Government regulation is another force that may get in your way and distort your market, but it can also help keep competition fair. Technology is becoming a force in instant mass marketing, but you must still customize it. People need to be treated as individuals, even though you are selling to them on a global scale.

“It is not simply what we know that matters, but how we react to what we do not know.”

Be sure you understand your competitive advantage and recheck your thinking often. Examine your human resources policies to see if they are helping you compete for the right workforce. Rethink your corporate bureaucracy and how you can make it more flexible. Do you fully understand your intellectual capital? What are you doing to use it to full advantage? How do you know what your customers truly want from you?

“Even when things are going well, you have to be absolutely dedicated to decreasing costs...It is something you have to do all the time and everywhere” [– Jean-Cyril Spinetta of Air France]

Experts have developed many approaches to management over the past century, beginning with Henri Fayol’s definition of the activities involved in general management in 1910. Frederick W. Taylor’s The Principles of Scientific Management, published in 1911, had a tremendous influence on leaders such as Henry Ford. Many of these management theories encourage executives to take on numerous roles: planner, role player, visionary transformer, self-organizer and turnaround strategist. To be effective, apply the combination of strategies that best fits your situation.

“The success or failure of a decision frequently depends on the delegation process.”

Make sure your decision-making process is well defined, especially as your organization increases in size and scope. What can you improve today? Be especially careful about your financial planning. Don’t follow fads that will weaken your financial position today with the hope of making any losses back later. These disastrous bets often come up empty. Use technology, but use it wisely and for specific purposes. Gather the data that will best benefit your process and methods of decision making, and make sure what you gather is reliable. This information is expensive to collect, so learn to use it in multiple ways.

Check Your Information

Most of your company’s mistakes probably stemmed from a faulty decision-making process. As a general rule, always check decisions for commonplace errors. Don’t fixate on the first bit of information you receive; the last piece of information might be correct while the first might be wrong. Do not try to maintain the status quo: Current conditions are not a pointer to the future. You might be in a market that is changing drastically, and if you don’t change with it, your competitors will beat you out of existence.

“The art of strategic decision making lies in both how we react to what we do not know and how we react to clearly defined situations.”

Help your team see all the evidence. If you give weight and attention only to evidence that confirms and supports your preferences, you can miss a potentially better outcome. Avoid being trapped by the past: The actions you took then have no relevance to your decision-making process now. Do not become emotionally attached to an investment, especially if it becomes clear that you are throwing good money after bad. Similarly, don’t pass up a great opportunity simply because it would mean throwing out an unwise investment. Weigh all the factors.

Making Good Decisions

Any executive job sometimes demands quick decision making. In some situations, an imperfect decision now is immeasurably better than a perfect decision made too late. Some situations are too complex and difficult to analyze for rapid action, but don’t make this call too quickly. Decisions involving creative judgments can be the most difficult to analyze in a “just the facts” scenario. To make effective business decisions, follow this simple six-step process:

  1. Clearly understand the issues – Understand not only your apparent choices, but also their context.
  2. Define the issues – Consider the implications of the decision you are making.
  3. Specify the decision – Actually putting your decisions into words makes it more concrete and points out inconsistencies in your thinking.
  4. Make the decision – Now that you have a solid foundation, this will be a much easier step.
  5. Implement the decision – Put it into action.
  6. Monitor the effects of the decision – If you still made a bad choice, admit it quickly. If it is a serious mistake, abandon it before it does any damage.

What Makes People Tick

Business decisions always have people-oriented components. Try to understand what makes your staff tick. In recent decades, many new decision-making models, such as “Reversal Theory” and other supplemental support tools, have become available. If you ignore them, you leave yourself vulnerable to competitors that use them. So learn about them and test them. Make sure that you know how to motivate your workforce, and that they understand their boundaries. This requires a balancing act, but that is what you are paid to do.

Creating a Scenario

No one can control or predict the future, but your job as a manager is to be ready for whatever arrives. One method of helping your organization prepare for the future is to get everyone involved in a process known as “scenario thinking.” Use this process by considering various scenarios that let you look at the forces you think will shape your company’s future. Weigh their impact on your organization. The specific outcome of these scenarios will be much less important than gaining some understanding of the factors that may influence your business.

“When cash-management issues are not central to strategic decisions, the door to disaster is wide open.”

Once you select a relevant future scenario that you can work through to evaluate your organization’s future, create a timeline back from that scenario to the present. Try to understand the implications this scenario has for your organization. As you work through a range of scenarios, you may see some common themes. Find the best way to give your company enough flexibility to meet any of these possible outcomes. Push beyond organizational inertia and reach for some real creativity. A word of warning: Do not confuse working up scenarios with forecasting or use them as a substitute for planning. Scenario thinking is a more general tool, not a commitment to a specific future course. It helps everyone think about your organization’s preparedness and its particular capabilities.

“Understanding customers, market developments and technology leads to customer-focused decisions and these, in turn, provide the most certain route to profitability.”

The general idea of business is growth, which takes five general paths:

  1. Growth from within – Organic growth is the usual course of action.
  2. Mergers and acquisitions – Taking over a company or merging involves important due-diligence issues. Be alert for the problems provoked by merging corporate cultures.
  3. Nonmerger acquisitions – These include partnerships and joint operating agreements. Although the cultural issues are somewhat less intense, contract and performance factors may be more important.
  4. Diversification – Developing new product lines or opening new markets can invite attacks from more established competitors and spread your resources very thin.
  5. Retrenchment – Dumping noncore product lines or getting out of certain unproductive markets can help you focus on improving the most profitable parts of your business.
“Ideas are no respecters of status or salary...Excellent ideas can be found in unexpected places: junior members of staff, competitors, other industries or historical legend.”

Never forget the financial aspects of growth. Your backers are an important resource. If they lose faith in your future, the lack of cash will kill your plans no matter how much you believe in them.

Strategic Approaches

Stay on top of your competitive situation. Don’t allow your rivals to make a move against you, and never miss a chance to gain ground on them. All products have a natural lifespan. Be aware of where your products are in their life cycles, and make plans for freshening them or creating something new. Be aware of how pricing shifts in your markets and know where you fit into that food chain. Keep an eye on those seemingly insignificant, pesky upstarts. They may get something right.

“Good leadership and good decision making go hand in hand.”

To understand how your company measures up for the purposes of shaping your business strategy, track these issues:

  • Investigate the many tools available to you for analyzing these issues – Michael Porter’s five-forces analysis assesses those factors close to your company that affect its ability to serve your customers and make a profit. The five forces are: 1) rivalry within your industry; 2) barriers to entry; 3) threat of substitution, 4) the power of suppliers; and 5) the power of customers. The ubiquitous SWOT analysis (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, threats) is another popular tool. Study these analytical devices so you can use them thoughtfully.
  • Pay attention to your customers – You are in business to provide your customers with your goods and services. So, keep their needs and desires at the front of everything you do. Ensure that good customer information flows through your organization and that your team understands its importance. Examine your current view of how your market is segmented to make certain your thinking matches current reality.
  • Keep your customer in mind as you design products – Who will buy it? How will they buy it? Where and how often will they buy it? How will they use it? Remember that customer segments move. Are you using all available data about your customers? Could extra information help you understand them better? Do you know how customers use your Web site?
  • What does your company know? –The objective information your company possesses, and its ability to understand and interpret that information is vital to your competitive success. Too often companies do not know what they know, or where that information and knowledge resides. Consider performing an audit to evaluate this critical competitive asset. Find ways to increase the quantity and quality of your information and knowledge. How do you maintain and protect it? Are you collecting the right stuff? Are you paying to collect useless, irrelevant information? How does your information flow match and support your organization?
  • Which ratios measure your business best? – Most companies focus on certain key ratios to spot trends in their performance. Determine which ratios give you the best feedback, not which are the easiest or the most familiar. Most organizations work hard to control and mitigate all risk. However, it may be well worth taking risk in matters that can help you grow and push past your competitors.
  • Which issues require decisions? – Do you have a process for setting your prices? Do you understand the price elasticity of your products, that is how much demand increases or decreases if you change their prices? Can you use it to compete? What barriers are keeping you out of a choice market? Do you support your sales team with every resource available? What more can you do to help them drive more profitable revenue? How are you using the Internet? What brands do you have or which can you develop? Are you getting full value from your brands? Can you do a more effective job in positioning your products? Are you measuring and managing customer loyalty?

Leading the Way

Certain simple rules for leadership will help keep you on the right path. Involve others in making decisions: You will get a better range of ideas and they will feel more committed to the outcome. Be honest and ethical. Know the precedents created by previous decisions in your company, and be consistent and supportive of your people. Nothing builds confidence like effectiveness in action, so have a method to your madness. Deal with bad news right away without wasting time on recriminations. Be positive in everything you do and say, and – if possible – do it all with a sense of humor. Finally, lead others as you would want to be led yourself.

About the Author

Jeremy Kourdi is a freelance writer who has written 10 business books and many articles. He writes for The Economist, and has worked with major corporations, professional associations, business schools and publishers.

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Business Strategy

Book Business Strategy

A Guide to Effective Decision-Making

Profile Books,
 


7 January 2026

The Cigarette Century

Recommendation

Today, it is hard to imagine that people once considered cigarette smoking glamorous. It’s equally hard to find an adult in the U.S. who has not experienced the devastating affects of smoking, either losing a loved one or battling cancer. The rise of the cigarette left nothing untouched. As it burned through American culture, smoking changed the way industry, government, science and health organizations operate and interact. In this comprehensive, scholarly work, Harvard professor Allan M. Brandt impressively presents a thorough, well-researched, soundly documented exposé about the impact of cigarettes on American life. His user-friendly book is well laid out and easy to understand. Surprisingly, it’s also captivating and emotional. Even cynics will feel outraged at big tobacco’s manipulations, deceit and lies, though Brandt’s evenhanded reporting lets the facts speak for themselves. BooksInShort recommends this illuminating work to researchers, public health officials, business historians and laymen alike.

Take-Aways

  • “Buck” Duke’s American Tobacco Company was one of the U.S.’s largest corporations before the government forced its monopoly to disband.
  • The tobacco industry’s carefully orchestrated strategy and the popularity of cigarettes among soldiers during WWI changed the public’s perception of smoking.
  • Brand differentiation made product choice an extension of individual personality.
  • Early on, clinicians documented smoking’s health risks, but their observations were not considered scientific “proof.”
  • Evidence revealing smoking as harmful to health threatened big tobacco.
  • The tobacco industry contrived a “controversy” regarding whether or not smoking was really harmful.
  • The issue of secondhand smoke challenged the acceptability of smoking.
  • America’s courts became the new frontier for fighting the tobacco industry.
  • Investigative journalism, industry whistle-blowers and government action struck subsequent blows against big tobacco.
  • As smoking fades in the U.S., the tobacco industry is aggressively focusing on global expansion.

Summary

America Lights Up

The first cigarette entrepreneur, James Buchanan “Buck” Duke, “almost single-handedly invented the modern cigarette.” He began manufacturing cigarettes in 1879. By 1885, he employed more than 700 cigarette rollers in North Carolina and New York. Duke remade the industry with a technological breakthrough: James Bonsack’s cigarette roller. With it, Duke could make 200 cigarettes a minute – 60 times more than a skilled hand roller could create. He negotiated a quick, secret contract with Bonsack. To raise demand to equal production, Duke invested heavily in ads and promotions, using coupons, premiums and collectable cards, and targeting teens.

“The centrality of tobacco within American culture is remarkable both for its longevity and for the elasticity of its products and meanings.”

Since cigarettes have few differentiations and are vulnerable to price competition, he focused on consolidation. Duke manipulated his competitors into joining his American Tobacco consortium. He established vertical integration of tobacco growing, and cigarette manufacturing and distribution. By the 1900s, American Tobacco was one of the U.S.’s top three companies. The government disbanded the monopoly in 1911, creating four firms: American Tobacco, Liggett & Myers, R.J. Reynolds and P. Lorillard. Philip Morris became the industry’s fifth primary player.

“The consumer culture in which the cigarette became so prominent and popular marked the construction of the first truly national, secular culture in American history.”

In the early 1900s, society saw the new smoking fad as dirty, lazy and indulgent. Cigarettes’ popularity among WWI soldiers helped change that view. General John Pershing famously said, “You ask me what we need to win this war. I answer tobacco, as much as bullets.” In response, the YMCA, an ardent opponent of smoking, sent cigarettes to the front.

“From its inception, the cigarette targeted the uninitiated; young people...were the primary constituency.”

The concept of “brand differentiation,” arose during the 1920s and quickly became embedded in the culture. Brand choice, based on differences among products and their consumers, became an extension of each customer’s personality, status, discernment and individuality. R.J. Reynolds president George Washington Hill collaborated with Albert Lasker, Edward Bernays and Raymond Loewy, pioneers in advertising, public relations and product design, respectively. Lasker created the “Reach for a Lucky” campaign, one of modern advertising’s most successful promotions. Bernays attempted nothing less than shaping societal behavior and values through brilliant, media-friendly “created events.” Loewy redesigned the Lucky package with its famous red target. By the early 1930s, all the tobacco companies hired marketing pros and spent lavishly on advertising. Their campaigns changed how society felt about women smokers, who were frowned upon until the late 1930s, when big tobacco PR made the cigarette a symbol of equality and independence, and women responded. This was not just cultural influence; the industry orchestrated a deliberate shift in society’s perceptions of cigarettes.

Dying for a Cigarette

R.J. Reynolds’s advertising slogan – “More Doctors Smoke Camels than Any Other Cigarette” – marked its strategic response to growing health concerns. U.S. lung cancer cases tripled between the early 1900s and 1946. Clinicians documented smoking’s health risks, but their observations were not seen as scientific “proof.” Several issues made it hard to prove that smoking undermined health. Some people never suffered its purported harms. In others, decades passed before the ill effects surfaced. Medical research methods created to identify communicable diseases, such as cholera and typhoid, didn’t apply to smoking.

“For some late nineteenth-century reformers, the cigarette represented many of the evils already associated with alcohol: wastefulness, indulgence, a poison harmful to self and others.”

The full impact of smoking didn’t become statistically visible in the U.S. until the late 1940s when Dr. Evarts Graham and Ernst Wynder compared 604 lung cancer patients to cancer-free people, and reported, “The enormous increase in the sale of cigarettes in this country approximately parallels the increase in bronchogenic carcinoma.” British medical statisticians A. Bradford Hill and Richard Doll found that cigarettes were the central cause of the rise in lung cancer. By the mid-’50s, researchers used “clinical observations, population studies and laboratory experiments” to establish the relationship between smoking and lung cancer. Experts began to agree that a link existed, and urged doctors and public health officials to warn the public.

The Great Debate

When revelations of smoking’s health risks threatened big tobacco, it responded with an innovative, unprecedented PR effort to create uncertainty and controversy. It cried that the question of whether smoking causes cancer has “two sides” and needed more “proof.” This doubt gave smokers a justification and let new smokers start. The manufactured controversy gave the industry a way to work against regulation and legal liability.

“The cigarette revealed the power of the technique of investing a commodity with cultural meaning...to motivate consumption.”

John W. Hill, of the PR firm Hill & Knowlton, masterminded the industry’s strategy of insisting that different opinions existed about smoking’s risks, the cornerstone of the industry’s efforts to obfuscate the scientific process. Hill invented the Tobacco Industry Research Committee (TIRC), a supposedly independent think tank, to make the industry seem committed to research. An American Cancer Society official told The New York Times, “When the tobacco companies say they’re eager to find out the truth, they want you to think the truth isn’t known...They want to...call it a controversy.” Hill got biologist Clarence Cook Little to head the TIRC. Vocal and charismatic, Cook was the perfect front man and scientific skeptic to perpetuate the debate.

The Rise of Antismoke

This state of affairs, with powerful corporations hampering the spread of vital scientific information, required a response from the U.S. Public Health Service. John F. Kennedy’s Surgeon General, Luther Terry, formed an investigative committee that reported smoking’s health risks in 1964, though Terry’s office lacked the resources for an antismoking initiative. Big tobacco demanded more proof but began saying that smokers must assume smoking’s “alleged” risks. The Food, Drug and Cosmetic (FTC) agency proposed new rules requiring warnings on cigarette packs and ads. The industry put its powerful Tobacco Institute lobby to work in Congress, the forum where it wielded the most influence. It acceded to warning labels law in order to place any risks on the smoker’s back. The bill pre-empted big tobacco’s biggest fear: tort litigation.

“From December 1953...tobacco companies would present a unified front on smoking and health; more than five decades of strategic and explicit collusion would follow.”

Antitobacco advocate John F. Banzhaf III turned the industry’s methods against it, asking the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to use the “fairness doctrine” to give antismoking organizations equal broadcast time to counteract cigarette ads. The FCC granted one antismoking announcement for every three ads. For three years, health agencies aired millions of dollars worth of public service announcements on the dangers of smoking. But when the FCC banned broadcast cigarette ads, with the industry’s cooperation, that effectively ended the antismoking campaign.

“Cigarette smoke as an environmental toxin would become the basis for a radical shift in the tobacco wars.”

The tobacco industry entered the 1970s relatively unscathed and unregulated. Antitobacco groups advocated for laws against smoking in public places. In 1973, Arizona became the first state to limit smoking in museums, libraries and buses. By the 1980s, most employers had antismoking policies. The industry aggressively reputed evidence of the harm of secondhand smoke, but the public did not require “proof” to prefer smoke-free environments. Big tobacco pushed smokers’ “rights,” but most smokers were already ambivalent about the habit; many said they wanted to quit. As health consciousness emerged, the smoker’s image declined. By 1985, only 30% of U.S. adults said they smoked. Their demographics reflected lower education and economic status.

I’ll See You in Court

By the 1980s, tort law held U.S. companies to greater responsibility, but no one had yet successfully sued cigarette manufacturers. Tobacco thwarted all such attempts by presenting TIRC experts who questioned research saying cigarettes caused lung cancer and arguing that no absolute scientific proof linked smoking to the disease. They asserted that the very debate on smoking’s health risks alerted people to its potential dangers.

“Smoking is – by far – the most significant preventable cause of death in the United States, resulting in more than 430,000 deaths each year from heart disease, emphysema, stroke and lung cancer, among other causes.”

Attorney Marc Edell brought a landmark case on behalf of dying lung cancer patient Rose Cipollone. He gained historical impact by using the courts’ evidence-discovery process to get access to more than 300,000 internal tobacco industry documents – the first significant crack in the industry’s armor. The jury held Cipollone responsible for her behavior, in spite of compelling evidence about the cigarettes’ addictive properties and the companies’ behavior. This recognition of individual choice and responsibility is deeply entrenched in U.S. culture. Yet, the court gave Rose’s husband Antonio $400,000, the first verdict against the industry in more than 300 suits.

“As a culture, we seek to insist – despite much powerful evidence to the contrary – that smoking remains a simple question of individual agency, personal fortitude, and the exercise of free will.”

In 1994, a powerful combination of investigative journalists, Congress and the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) began to assert that big tobacco had deliberately manipulated its product to maintain its addictive nature. The Cipollone trial revealed a Phillip Morris document proving that the company understood nicotine’s addictive properties. It read, “Think of the cigarette pack as a storage container for a day’s supply of nicotine. Think of the cigarette as a dispenser for a dose unit of nicotine. Think of a puff of smoke as the vehicle of nicotine.” An ABC TV exposé by Pulitzer Prize-winner Walt Bogdanich sparked an intense legal battle between the industry and ABC, which ultimately backed down. But, the media floodgates were open. In 1994, seven tobacco CEOs claimed ignorance and denied health risks before an outraged Congressional subcommittee. Within a year of this media disaster, each of the companies replaced its CEO.

Blow Your Whistle

As a former employee of an industry law firm, Merrell Williams had reviewed thousands of the tobacco industry’s internal documents, gathering more than 4,000 pages of incriminating evidence. Eventually the press, Congress and various universities received leaked copies of these “Cigarette Papers.” They proved the industry had understood smoking’s carcinogenic effects and nicotine’s addictive properties since the 1960s. This blew the smoke away from the debate about tobacco. The antitobacco forces now had ample data for liability litigation. Class actions suits became the new battlefield in the tobacco wars. In the early 1990s, more lawyers filed antitobacco suits than in the previous three decades. Broin v. Philip Morris, the first case to get to trial, sought $5 billion for 60,000 flight attendants who suffered the ill effects of secondhand smoke. At trial, tobacco CEOs finally conceded that smoking might cause health risks. They settled before the verdict, also a first, agreeing to invest $300 million in a research institute.

“We stand on the threshold of a global pandemic of tobacco-related diseases.”

Lawyers filed a class action suit for addicted smokers in Florida. Another group sued the tobacco companies to recover state Medicaid expenses for smoking-related diseases. By 1990, treating such diseases cost more than $2 billion every year. Individuals began winning cases. Brown & Williamson had to pay lung cancer victim Grady Carter $750,000. Marlboro smoker and cancer patient Patricia Henley won $51 million. In 1997, state cases fell under the private negotiations of a “global settlement agreement” between the industry and the states. Acceptance required an act of Congress, so the industry brought its powerful lobby to bear. In 1998, it won the “Master Settlement Agreement,” a “pale reflection” of the original agreement. Big tobacco would pay “$206 billion to 46 states over 25 years.”

Cancer Knows No Borders

U.S. cigarette smoking has declined steadily, so the tobacco industry is seeking new global markets aggressively, using its same old ads, marketing and PR strategies, such as “establishing ties to agricultural and finance ministers in developing nations,” “emphasizing the economic significance of tobacco,” “creating resentment about the ‘imposition of controls’,” and “attempting to shift authority over tobacco from the World Health Organization (WHO) to more sympathetic agencies.” Cigarettes have long-term health implications for these countries, but distinguishing public health concerns from restraints on trade has proven difficult. In the mid-’90s, the WHO started creating a “international treaty on tobacco control.” By 1999, the formal process began to set up a Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (FCTC). In 2003, 192 WHO nations accepted the FCTC, the WHO’s first multilateral treaty. Whether history will view this as a landmark victory for public health or a feeble attempt to rein in big tobacco is yet to be seen.

About the Author

Allen M. Brandt is the Amalie Moses Kass Professor of the History of Medicine at Harvard Medical School. His books include No Magic Bullet: A Social History of Venereal Disease in the United States since 1880.

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The Cigarette Century

Book The Cigarette Century

The Rise, Fall, and Deadly Persistence of the Product That Defined America

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