Pushing Cool

"In Pushing Cool, Dr. Keith Wailoo presents a sixty-year history of menthol cigarettes becoming a racialized product. . . . Wailoo's powerful text reminds us that business and medical ethics do not exist outside of histories of racial exploitation and oppression." * Nursing Clio *
“Wailoo examines how the tobacco industry framed Black people as a niche market and the industry’s evolution — its secrets, practices, and power. . . . [His] diligent research leaves little room for conjecture, making a coherent and engaging story out of a century of conversations, advertising, and activism for and against smoking. . . . Wailoo stands firmly on the side of the people, aiming to educate for the health and well-being of all.” * Los Angeles Review of Books *
"Wailoo mines press reports through the decades, along with posters, billboards and troves of internal industry documentation that cigarette companies were forced to make public after a spate of lawsuits that ended in 1998. With deadly repetition, menthols have been silent players on the stage of US history, witnesses to epic flashpoints at which health and politics collide. The case is stronger for the specificity and rich detail that Wailoo weaves into it." * Nature *
“Wailoo draws on collections of internal tobacco industry documents made public through litigation, along with other historical sources, to peer into the hidden world of tobacco marketing. . . . Demonstrate[s] how tobacco companies have long designed and reimagined their products to attract new customers.” * Science *
"The saga of menthol tobacco is documented in Wailoo’s book Pushing Cool: Big Tobacco, Racial Marketing, and the Untold Story of the Menthol Cigarette. This work neatly crystallises his position as a historian whose career has addressed issues of race, ethnicity, and identity, and how they intersect with health and health policy." * The Lancet *
"Engrossing. . . [A] history of the evolution of targeted tobacco marketing and how the industry strategically created a demand and then peddled their product to Black America." * Salon *
"Tracking the evolution of a century’s worth of targeted marketing, this history documents the sinister engineering of a Black consumer preference for menthol cigarettes. Wailoo details how Big Tobacco placed billboards in inner-city neighborhoods, strategically funded Black enterprises, and marshalled a vast network of influencers—from Ebony to the N.A.A.C.P.—to yoke ideas of Black authenticity to smoking menthols." * New Yorker *
"Wailoo brings together COVID-19, police choke-holds, and a corner store—'the best place in town to find menthol cigarettes'—as the trifecta that ended George Floyd’s life, tragically symbolized by his famous last words: 'I can’t breathe'. . . Highly recommended." * Choice *
“For decades, cigarette makers have used menthol to target Black Americans. Wailoo does an excellent job showing how Big Tobacco has used both its marketing muscle and political power to get mentholated smoke into African American lungs—with deadly consequences. An indispensable text for anyone who recognizes that Black lungs matter.” * Robert N. Proctor, Stanford University *
“Pushing Cool unpacks the tobacco industry’s brilliant, deceptive, and diabolically successful strategy to hook African Americans on menthol cigarettes. Utilizing remarkable research and analysis, Wailoo demonstrates how the industry established a commercial choke hold on Black America, wantonly disregarding the devastating trail of disease and death that their product generated. If ever there was a case for banning menthol cigarettes, this is it.” * Allan M. Brandt, Harvard University *
“With nuance and flare, Wailoo illuminates how a complex and deeply unsettling fabric of racial capitalism created a Black inner-city market for the most dangerous chemical flavor in the history of smoking. This is essential reading for historians, policy makers, ethicists, and social justice advocates reckoning with profound disparities as part of a tobacco end game.” * Amy L. Fairchild, The Ohio State University *
“As Wailoo reveals in this astute and stunning work, menthol cigarettes are an acquired taste: an appetite deliberately cultivated by marketers, the media, and other influencers. Demographically targeted and racially exploitative marketing was unleashed as a strategy to captivate consumers in the face of growing public awareness of the health dangers of smoking. Pushing Cool is a brilliant, unsparing, and powerful rendering of Big Tobacco’s deadly racial predation.” * Alondra Nelson, Institute for Advanced Study *
“This captivating, comprehensive book contains something to intrigue everyone—from lawyers to psychologists, marketers to historians. Pushing Cool is a unique and important work that deserves to be read widely.” * Andrea Freeman, University of Hawai’i at Manoa *
“In Pushing Cool, Wailoo tells the fascinating story of how tobacco companies and advertising firms marketed menthol cigarettes, especially to African Americans. Diving deep into this untold history, he also brings essential insight into how the construction of pleasure-enhancing products and processes of racialization have enjoyed mutually informing histories well into the twentieth century.” * Samuel Kelton Roberts Jr., Columbia University *
"Keith Wailoo tells the intricate and poignant story of menthol cigarettes for the first time. He pulls back the curtain to reveal the hidden persuaders who shaped menthol buying habits and racial markets across America: the world of tobacco marketers, consultants, psychologists, and social scientists, as well as Black lawmakers and civic groups including the NAACP. Today most Black smokers buy menthols, and calls to prohibit their circulation hinge on a history of the industry’s targeted racial marketing. In 2009, when Congress banned flavored cigarettes as criminal enticements to encourage youth smoking, menthol cigarettes were also slated to be banned. Through a detailed study of internal tobacco industry documents, Wailoo exposes why they weren’t and how they remain so popular with Black smokers." * New Books Network *
"Pushing Cool is a timely history of how tobacco companies aggressively shaped the contours of Black consumerism through exploitative marketing practices." * Isis *
"[an] excellent book that succeeds in telling not only the history of the marketing of menthol cigarettes in the United States but also how the tobacco industry shaped and exploited African American consumer culture." -- Daniel O’Neill * The Social History of Alcohol and Drugs *