# Firebrand: A Tobacco Lawyer's Journey - Hardcover

by **Joshua Knelman** (Author)

****"You'll inhale this tell-all book about the tobacco industry and never look at a No Smoking sign the same way again!"  
**\--Margaret Atwood, via Twitter******

Mad Men meets _Bad Blood_ in this addictive, behind-the-scenes globe-trotting narrative of moral ambiguity, law, public policy, and big tobacco.

_"Given everything the lawyer knew up to that point about smoking, as far as he could tell, cigarettes shouldn't even have been available as a mass market product..."_

It's the start of the new millennium and a young lawyer is recruited to work for an unnamed multinational company. It isn't until his second interview that the product the company produces is revealed to him: cigarettes. Possibly the most controversial consumer product in human history: seductive, addictive, and deadly--yet completely legal. Over the next decade, he travels the world as he works as legal counsel to help successfully market cigarettes in dozens of countries.

_Firebrand_ ventures into the heart of the tobacco industry and the icy paradoxes of capitalism, each chapter a counterintuitive lesson on how cigarette companies--the target of increasingly intense anti-smoking campaigns and government regulations, including the 1964 Surgeon General's Report and 200-billion-dollar debt of the 1998 Master Settlement Agreement--continue to pivot and thrive in the 21st century, inhaling profits from their one billion smokers worldwide.

As _Mad Men_ did for the alcohol-fueled, oversexed, corrupt world of New York advertising, _Firebrand_ does for the even more despised world of big tobacco, in an addictive, behind-the-scenes piece of storytelling. The lawyer's work takes him from manufacturing factories to hocking "sticks" at UK corner store counters; from tacky resorts in Spain and pirate city-states to luxury hotels and Grand Prix events across European and Asian cities. A contemporary tale of our ambiguous times, told with character-based drive and dry humour, _Firebrand_ is a grand tour of the compelling paradoxes of globalization and corporate culture, shrink-wrapped in an engrossing narrative of a morally dubious yet completely legal enterprise.

****"This is storytelling at its best. Wry observation, compelling narrative, fascinating characters, page-turning writing, and an age-old question driving it all..._"_  
**\--Joel Bakan, author of** _**_The New Corporation: How 'Good' Corporations are Bad for Democracy_**_****

### Author Biography

JOSHUA KNELMAN is an award-winning author, a founding member of _The Walrus_ magazine, and the recipient of multiple National Magazine Awards. His writing has appeared in _The Walrus_, _Toronto Life_, _National Post_, and _The Globe and Mail_. His debut true crime bestseller, _Hot Art_, earned the Crime Writers of Canada Best Non-Fiction Book Award and the Edna Staebler Award for Creative Non-Fiction. He lives in Toronto.

**Number of Pages:** 272

**Dimensions:** 1.1 x 8.2 x 5.5 IN

**Publication Date:** September 06, 2022

## Details

- **Price:** 26.0 USD
- **Vendor:** Books by splitShops
- **Type:** Books
- **Tags:** Books by splitShops, Shopify Collective

## Variants

| Variant | Price | Available |
|---------|-------|-----------|
| Default Title | 26.00 USD | In stock |

## Images

- Firebrand: A Tobacco Lawyer's Journey - Hardcover

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