Cigar Box Labels: Portraits of Life, Mirrors of History pays tribute to cigars and the pictorial glory of Victorian-era cigar box labels, a unique form of commercial advertising that flourished in the business place a century ago and helped drive cigars to widespread prominence in American society. Those who fancy these stunningly beautiful paper images as a hobby are in the midst of the hottest area of antique tobacco advertising collecting today. Showcased here are some of the finest and most desirable examples produced by the old stone chromolithographic method between 1860 and 1910. This...

Since 1789, when the first tobacco advertisement appeared, tobacco manufacturers have been pioneers of advertising and marketing, revolutionizing the American way of doing business in the process. The folksy, familiar and innocent-looking images portrayed in tobacco advertising were part of the new wave of product promotion - tin tags, cigar and tobacco labels, insert cards (including the first baseball cards) - that helped transform America into a nation of smokers by 1900. With illustrations of antique artifacts, old photographs and contemporary advertising, the reader is taken through the...

Those who will recall the Simpson trial as the legal extravaganza of its century might be surprised by striking parallels between it and the late-nineteenth century trial of the infamous Frank James.In 1882 James surrendered to authorities voluntarily and was tried for murder the following year in Gallatin, Missouri. Petrone's analysis of primary and secondary sources tells the story of a charismatic prominent figure, who assembles his century's legal dream team and in the face of overwhelming incriminating evidence, wins acquittal from a sympathetic jury."The trial of Frank James has never...