On July 11, many thousands of people heard a fascinating story on NPR and WBUR's Here and Now radio program, in which two esteemed historians asserted that Americans never would have been as dependent as they are on tobacco were it not for the considerable support of the U.S. government. To many, this was surely a surprising assertion, since Big Tobacco is often perceived to be at odds with big government, with its regulations and disclosure requirements and general aversion to its citizens getting sick and dying. There was only one problem: the two historians, both men, did not credit the source of the story—another historian, a woman named Sarah Milov, and her new book, The Cigarette: A Political History.
Within days, the story was everywhere. It first broke in The Lily, where the article was subtitled, “They have tenure. She does not.” “Every single word they said was from my book,” Milov, an assistant professor at the University of Virginia told The Lily, which noted she was coming up for tenure within the year. Twitter exploded, and countless other publications ran stories.
