During the Cold War, Bulgaria emerged as the world’s largest exporter of cigarettes. The growth of its tobacco industry was spurred by its ability to supply the Soviet Union, the world’s largest importer. Mary Neuburger’s monograph traces the evolution of Bulgaria’s industry from the country’s independence from Ottoman rule in the nineteenth century until its postwar peak years. Although the Bulgarian tobacco ascendancy in Eastern Europe was linked to Cold War political alignments, the modernization of the industry resembles Western mass production processes in ways that might be unexpected.

Neuburger’s book is divided into three sections: Bulgaria’s independence in the 1870s until World War I; the interwar era; and the Cold War. For each period, she offers two chapters. The first focuses on cultural developments associated with changing consumption practices and the second focuses on the development of the tobacco industry, which documents the rise of Bulgartabak, its tobacco monopoly. The book can almost be read as two studies. The consumption chapters relate the emergence of modernity in Bulgaria as the country found its way out from Ottoman rule. This “modernity” is rooted in cultural practices, beginning in a location—the coffeehouse—and moving into other aspects of mass consumption. The industry chapters relate a straightforward history of economic organization, consolidation, and, ultimately, monopolization. Together, these two narratives offer a simultaneous “bottom up” view of society and a “top down” study of political economy.

Turkish, or “Oriental,” tobacco is the subgenus of the plant that was developed in Bulgaria, Macedonia, and Thrace. Turkish tobacco had less nicotine content than the American Virginia and Burley varieties, and was thought to be more flavorful. Both its distinctive flavor and aroma led to its widespread popularity in Europe in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Focusing on the role that Turkish tobacco played in the development of the Bulgarian industry makes Neuburger’s study a complement to the recent analysis of the agricultural development of the American varieties in Barbara Hahn’s Making Tobacco Bright (2011). Furthermore, when Neuburger advances into the interwar period, the relationship between Bulgaria’s tobacco growers and Reemtsma, the German tobacco monopoly, becomes key, connecting this book with Robert Proctor’s Nazi War on Cancer (1999). In both cases, Neuburger reveals how fundamental Bulgarian tobacco has been to the global history of the commodity, even if earlier studies have neglected its preeminence.

Bulgaria’s industrial expansion was inextricably linked to the world wars. During World War I, Bulgaria increased its yearly production from 3 million kilograms of tobacco to 15 million to supply its German allies. The war also enabled Bulgaria’s conquest of Thrace and Macedonia, bringing most of the region’s tobacco fields directly under the state’s control. Along the way, Bulgaria displaced American Tobacco’s control over the region, positioning itself for its twentieth-century dominance in Europe. In the interwar era, Neuburger argues that tobacco “had the potential to solve a range of social and fiscal problems” (p. 132), both creating the revenue for reparations and rebuilding and providing employment to the displaced refugees from Thrace and Macedonia.

In the postwar era, tobacco was as essential for the Soviet–Bulgarian relationship as it had been for the Nazi–Bulgarian relationship. Disconnected from most of the world’s markets, the Soviet Union was dependent on Bulgaria’s ability to supply its consumption needs. The Soviet market was so great, in fact, that the Bulgarian tobacco monopoly ultimately turned to the West to provide new technology and production techniques to keep its trade partner sated.

Although the growth of the tobacco industry to its heights in the Cold War reveals a remarkable Communist success story, the related domestic consumption history is far more ambiguous. In the nineteenth century, smoking was associated with the coffeehouse and the emergence of public life in the wake of independence. Orthodox women, however, believed that smoking was a marker of “questionable morals,” acceptable only for Muslims, Jews, and Roma. By the interwar period, though, the public appearance of women smokers created a greater challenge, breaking down the earlier religiously based objections to the habit. Smoking was then associated with the growth of Western vices, alongside “drinking, gambling, and sexual depravity” (p. 80). Smoking reflected a generational conflict that was embraced by the Communist Party, which now reframed the egalitarian nature of the habit as a rejection of the past and a symbol of the “modern” nation.

Unfortunately, the cultural history narrated through consumption practices in not as successfully related as the industrial one. With the broad timeframe covered, it may be that there were too many shifts in politics and society to easily uncover these changes through tobacco habits. In addition, the different sources employed for the book’s two halves may have added to the disjuncture. Whereas the industrial history was uncovered through company and state records, the cultural chapters rely on a broad mixture of literature, newspapers, and memoirs. The memoirs, in particular, are instrumental for Neuburger’s interest in the development of modernity in Bulgaria, but this might be at the expense of understanding cultural constructions of tobacco. For example, the chapter exploring the coffeehouse’s role in independent Bulgaria tells the reader far more about the coffeehouse than it does about smoking in the nineteenth century.

Neuburger’s monograph is a welcome examination of tobacco in a non-Western context and fills a considerable lacuna in the field. If this book were only a study of one of the twentieth century’s largest tobacco companies, it would still be an important contribution. At the same time, Neuburger’s examination of “modernity” in a non-Western context should engage scholars outside the field of consumption studies. Although the number of histories of tobacco has grown considerably in the past few years, Neuburger demonstrates that there is still ground to uncover.