Michael Laviolette

I still haven't gotten to read the whole book, but it deserved the Pulitzer it got. It starts with the sad side of tobacco's consequences, then goes into the history of its development in America as a business. I hope to grow some and learn to mix the things that turn it into dip and chew. I notice that dip and chew can be ways to pickle it for later, but also enjoy it now... funny how drying out one pinch of dip before you dip it is super strong if you smoke it, but if you dip it for a while, then dry it, it tastes like a real regular, real good cigarette. Even though people have lots to say in the negative about cotton and tobacco, they are still good things in lots of ways. Helped make America great. But that's another can of worms...

This book inspired a funny movie plot, even before I actually read it... my Dad was reading it; but I had been researching how the antichrist's use of a "god of fortresses" as mentioned in Daniel 11 was likely derived from a prehistoric Martian civilization that ended in a similar way to the Trojan war.. but, the funny plot was s mix of the Beavis and Butthead stoner/teacher sort of playing Jesus in the underworld on Mars, in a similar way to the opening scene of Ghostbusters, where one guy is using his little electric device to "notice" if someone can read the mind or see the card he's holding... how he was good to the good-looking girl, but the guys probably weren't as advanced as the women just yet along that line. But add some similarity to Total Recall also... anyway, I did finally read it and it is funny... Jesus drives a late 70s Camaro, and sort of wrecks into a tree once while he is talking to someone as they drive. But another funny thought that was more or less inspired by this book is how the undergound of a hollow planet would have a gravity toward the surface, since the mass is the cause of gravity, not just the center of a planet...But, being so large and possibly lit from the center, there may still be ways to see a horizon instead of just a hill that gets taller and taller in the distance.