SOURCE: Hamilton, Joan O'C. “Warning: Hazardous to the Tobacco Lobby.” Business Week, no. 3377 (6 June 1994): 15-19.

In the following review, Hamilton finds Buckley's satire funny and engaging in Thank You for Smoking, praising the novel's exposé of the tobacco industry.

In the recurring nightmare that makes reporters wake up with the cold sweats, you believe a source who has just tipped you off to the Big Story, and then, after you run with it—whoops. Well, the nightmare came true for poor Nick Naylor.

A Washington television reporter, Naylor is on a run-of-the-mill assignment covering the President's trip to a Marine base when he overhears Secret Service agents fretting about Rover choking on a piece of meat. As Naylor happens to know, “Rover” is the President's code name. When somebody pronounces Rover dead, Naylor grimly tells the nation the news, sending the stock market plunging 180 points before the White...