Synopses & Reviews
Nick Naylor likes his job. In the neo-puritanical nineties, it's a challenge to defend the rights of smokers and a privilege to promote their liberty. Sure, it hurts a little when you're compared to Nazi war criminals, but Nick says he's just doing what it takes to pay the mortgage and put his son through Washington's elite private school, St. Euthanasius. He can handle the pressure from the antismoking zealots, but he is less certain about his new boss, BR, who questions whether Nick is worth $150,000 a year to fight a losing war. Under pressure to produce results, Nick goes on a PR offensive. But his heightened notoriety makes him a target for someone who wants to prove just how hazardous smoking can be. If Nick isn't careful, he's going to be stubbed out.
Review
"As usual, Buckley's humor is over the top, although he doesn't exactly choose tough targets....Buckley is a smoother, funnier and more refined heir apparent to Art Buchwald's throne, and this book cements his position as the best up-and-coming political satirist on the literary map." Publishers Weekly
Review
"Is it even remotely possible that a novelist could have the skill, to say nothing of the wit, to write a book about a tobacco lobbyist and have the reader actually rooting for the scoundrel in its final pages?...A hilarious novel." The New York Times Book Review
Review
"Buckley's caricatures of Washington politics, corporate power plays, media spin control, Hollywood pretensions and the human foibles of self-delusion and denial are appallingly right on the money in this...laugh-out-loud novel." The San Francisco Chronicle
Review
"Topical allusions and a quick pace guarantee an amusing read, but Buckley's stereotyped characters, impassive prose, and pat ending limit his satirical reach to entertaining but inconsequential jabs." Kirkus Reviews
Review
"The superior goofball plot, raffish cast and zany sex scenes make this the funniest of Buckley's books." Time
Review
"Buckley's prose is well behaved and his dialog brisk and lifelike. All in all, an amiable and worthwhile work..." Library Journal
Synopsis
Nobody blows smoke like Nick Naylor. Hes a spokesman for the Academy of Tobacco Studies-in other words, a flack for cigarette companies, paid to promote their product on talk and news shows. The problem? Hes so good at his job, so effortlessly unethical, that hes become a target for both anti-tobacco terrorists and for the FBI. In a country where half the people want to outlaw pleasure and the other want to sell you a disease, what will become of the original Puff Daddy?
About the Author
Christopher Buckley is a novelist and editor of Forbes FYI magazine. He lives in Washington, D.C., with his wife and two children and dog, Duck. In 1998, he was inducted into the Légion d'honneur by the president of the Republic of France for "extraordinary contributions to French culture," despite the fact that his French is barely sufficient to order a meal in a restaurant. He has been an adviser to every president since William Howard Taft, a remarkable achievement, since he was born in 1952.