SOURCE: Ferguson, Andrew. “Up in Smoke.” National Review 66, no. 11 (13 June 1994): 68-70.

In the following review, Ferguson applauds Buckley's wit, political savvy, and characterizations in Thank You for Smoking.

In the daily melodramas of Washington life—at least the stock versions offered by the hometown paper and the network news—the plots are predictable and the characters easy to read. We have good guys (public-interest lawyers, environmentalists, idealistic congressmen calling for an “expanded federal role”), and we have bad guys (pro-lifers, Second Amendment enthusiasts, people with Pentagon contracts). And then we have the really, really bad guys: the publicists, talking heads, and spinmeisters of the Tobacco Institute, the infamous lobbying arm of the tobacco industry.

Watching one of these poor souls bob and weave on MacNeil-Lehrer, or grimace through a grilling on the morning shows, you can't help wondering: What's it like to be so openly hated, so contemptuously...