IN THE BEGINNING . . . Huron Indian myth has it that in ancient times, when the land was barren and the people were starving, the Great Spirit sent forth a woman to save humanity. As she traveled over the world, everywhere her right hand touched the soil, there grew potatoes. And everywhere her left hand touched the soil, there grew corn. And when the world was rich and fertile, she sat down and rested. When she arose, there grew tobacco . . .

Since the first Europeans imported tobacco from the New World more than 500 years ago, smoking has become a global obsession. Whether you're a committed smoker or a zealous guardian of public health, this lush coffee-table book about the history of smoking is bound to fascinate. It is easy to forget that the practice of smoking tobacco has aroused vehement responses - both positive and negative - for a long time. Some doctors in the early modern period attributed miraculous medical powers to smoking, claiming it staved off hunger and melancholy, cured rheumatic ailments, and was good for lung complaints. But the nay-sayers were equally forceful. Ben Jonson satirised the use of tobacco as a panacea in Every Man In His Humour (1601); King James I wrote a treatise on its pernicious qualities, including its addictiveness. But despite James' imposition of a 4000 per cent tax increase on the weed, smoking spread. As Barnabe Rich lamented in 1617: "If all be sick that doth use to take tobacco, God helped England, it is wonderfully infected, and his Majestie hath but a few subjects that be healthfull in his whole dominions." Tobacco wasn't strictly a European affair, of course, and nor were attempts to discourage its use. It spread along trade routes in the 17th century to Africa, the Near East, to China and Japan. Wherever it spread, smoking found its critics. Users were condemned for indolence and pleasure-seeking but one of the main strands of attack was the foreignness of tobacco. The Ottoman Sultan Murad IV was the first ruler to ban the alien vice, on pain of death; Japan and China followed suit. All to no avail. Smoking was quickly adopted worldwide and striking regional variations developed as each new culture adopted the practice of tobacco consumption. Indeed, one of the chief pleasures of this book lies in its images of elaborate smoking paraphernalia from all over the world. There are hand-carved pipes from Africa, hookahs and sheeshas from the Middle East, the Japanese kiseru, German meerschaums, Cuban cigars, even a floral porcelain tray built to hold individual cigarettes for the discerning lady of the belle-epoque.

As smoking became socially accepted, it naturally became a subject of the arts. In Meso-America - tobacco's heartland - decorative vases depicting smoking gods and animals had been produced for hundreds of years. From the 17th century on, European artists used smokers for different purposes. Smoking became prevalent in paintings of the Dutch Golden Age, where smoking was presented chiefly as a pleasure.