The Cigarette

(Harvard, $ 35) Before the U.S. government became Big Tobacco’s nominal foe, it may have been the industry’s most important ally, said Scott Stern in The New Republic. Sarah Milov’s “nuanced and ultimately devastating” history of the cigarette chronicles how the once reviled product took off after federal spending put it in the ration packs of World War I soldiers and especially after $1 billion in Marshall Plan funds were spent on tobacco. Every turn in this story of corporate exploitation remains “stunningly relevant today.”