Riveting journalism that probes the triple threat of vaping, nicotine addiction, and corporate greed.
How the electronic cigarette industry emerged, evolved, and imploded beneath the weight of controversy and grievous misguidance.
In this comprehensive scrutiny of the vaping craze and the business behind it, Bloomberg News investigative reporter Etter focuses on two major contributors. Faced with declining adult consumption metrics throughout the 1990s, cigarette titan Altria (previously known as Philip Morris Companies Inc.) and its former upper-level executive Howard Willard III, a tobacco-industry lifer, were desperate for a comeback. Etter seamlessly infuses this story with that of tech wunderkinds and ex-smokers James Monsees and Adam Bowen, who strived to develop a nicotine delivery prototype in 2006, positioned as a beneficial “public health contribution” and an alternative to more harmfully combustive tobacco products. The author diligently chronicles the numerous redesigns of their nicotine liquid vaporizing invention, the Juul, as well as the dogged attention from tobacco executives, whom Etter categorizes as “not unlike spies” as they grew gluttonous for opportunities to collaborate or create their own version of the vape pen. Despite “gung-ho dealmaker” Willard’s former contradictory affiliations with smoking cessation programs, he forged ahead, sacrificed public safety, and became a “Juulionaire” with many others. As the interests of big tobacco and Silicon Valley came together, the e-cigarette wars declared Juul the victor, though the product became mired in corruption regarding the maximization of nicotine’s psychoactive effects and deceptive advertising of candied flavor variations targeting youth on social media. The backlash from public safety watchdogs was brutal, and as consumer trust faltered, an onslaught of personal injury lawsuits sealed the product’s fate. Etter illuminates the crucial missteps that can occur when greed and poor leadership obscure the vision of an enterprising product. Armed with an immense body of research and insider interview material, the author digs deep into the controversial industry to reveal the avarice, scandal, corporate egotism, and rampant “political knife fights.” Pair this with Jamie Ducharme’s Big Vape to get the entire sordid story in meticulous detail.
Riveting journalism that probes the triple threat of vaping, nicotine addiction, and corporate greed.Pub Date: May 25, 2021
ISBN: 978-0-593-23798-4
Page Count: 496
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: May 5, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2021
This elementary guide to economics for the layperson maintains an insistently jokey style that strains to amuse but more often just lards the text with annoying verbiage. Buchholz, a member of the White House Economic Policy Council from 1989 to 1993 and now president of a consulting firm, sets out to provide an introduction to key economic concepts and thinkers. Starting with familiar subjects (the 1990 recession, inflation, government deficits, fiscal and monetary policy), he discusses the mechanisms of the free market. He then looks at some topical issues—education, environmental regulation, and health care—from an economist's viewpoint. International trade, foreign investment, and currency exchange are also covered, with a strong free-trade bias. Buchholz provides sensible but simplistic advice on personal investing and concludes with a brief history of economic thought from Adam Smith to contemporary supply-side economics. Scattered throughout are glib or unsupported statements such as: ``The Soviet Union collapsed because its rusty vicious system could not keep up with expectations for economic improvement.'' And unqualified conclusions abound: ``Smart governments know that by allowing trade, nations gently coerce their citizens to shift precious resources from low-productivity to high-productivity industries.'' Whatever useful information Buchholz does provide is smothered in deadening humor. He cannot even keep himself from calling economics the ``dismal science,'' going so far as to devote a passage to the question of whether Adam Smith himself was ``dismal.'' (Smith seems to have redeemed his humanity in Buchholz's eyes by tripping into a ``huge nauseous pool of goop'' while visiting a factory.) Like an irritating traveling companion distracting one from the scenery, this tries too hard to entertain while en route.
Pub Date: May 1, 1995
ISBN: 0-525-93902-4
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Dutton
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 1995
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Perceptive perspectives on the organizational order that could characterize successful institutions in the Global Village's high- tech future. Asserting that rigid hierarchies with built-in caste systems will not be able to respond effectively to the postindustrial era's demands, Helgesen (The Female Advantage, 1990, etc.) focuses on an alternative framework she felicitously dubs ``the web of inclusion.'' In the author's persuasively documented view, this flexible, functional, participatory structure affords many advantages, including the ability to evolve by trial and error. In addition to taking individuals previously relegated to the periphery and making them integral to a productive communal whole, she observes, networklike webs can (with a big assist from advanced hardware and software) push power down the traditional chain of command to erstwhile subordinates: in the military, to cite one arresting example, front-line troops able to identify and hit targets of various sorts. At the heart of the author's disquisition are case studies detailing how web arrangements have helped four companies and one medical facility overcome challenges of the sort apt to be commonplace in the next century. Unfortunately for Helgesen, Intel—her marketing paradigm for the fine job it made of appealing to PC users over the heads of equipment manufacturers— has recently suffered through a widely publicized fiasco involving the Pentium chip's shortcomings. On the plus side of the ledger, Anixter Inc., Boston's Beth Israel Hospital, the Miami Herald, and Nickelodeon provide object lessons on ways in which webs can deal fruitfully with problems such as diversity and continuous employee training programs. At the close, the author shares some constructive thoughts on workplace design, the virtual office, and allied instrumentalities that could encourage the best and brightest staffers as well as their less gifted colleagues to assume greater responsibility on the job. A first-rate contribution to organizational theory and practice. (Author tour)
Pub Date: May 15, 1995
ISBN: 0-385-42364-0
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 1995
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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