Cigarettes Are Sublime

"An elegant display of prose. . . . [Klein’s] polemic is bravely cranky. The book is important for . . . situating the act of smoking in Western culture and telling us addicts, without condescension, what kind of dance we’re doing 10 or 20 times a day."—Laura Mansnerus, New York Times Book Review

"[A] wise and timely book: it is also sly, funny, and peculiarly seductive. . . . [A] remarkable achievement."—John Banville, New York Review of Books

"[A] compact history of compulsion. . . . [Klein’s] book is a farewell to a loyal companion."—Colson Whitehead, Voice Literary Supplement

"[A]n elegant and erudite examination of the question: If cigarettes are so bad, why do so many people insist on smoking them? A breath of fresh air in a debate that has become too stale."—David Streitfeld, Washington Post Book World

"Lively, obsessive."—Anthony Lane, The New Yorker

"Witty and subversive."—John Leonard, The Nation

"Klein has written an exquisite book which takes us beyond a consideration of smoking as rite de passage."—Max Farrar, Times Higher Education Supplement

"A languorous meditation on humanity’s most futile and wasteful habit."—Christopher Hitchens, The Independent on Sunday

"Many people, deciding to quit smoking, go cold turkey; others use nicotine gum or a patch. Klein, however, has taken a unique approach: the writing of this learned, elegant, and fanciful analysis of—and ‘elegy’ for—the cigarette. . . . [It is] full of delightful whirls of logic and puffs of insight."—Kirkus Reviews

Richard Klein is Professor of French at Cornell University and editor of Diacritics. He quit smoking while writing Cigarettes Are Sublime and has been nicotine-free ever since.