Author: Allen Carr
     ISBN: 0140277633
Publisher: Penguin books

This is a public service announcement.

If you smoke, and want to stop, read this book. There is a very good chance that this book will stop you smoking, if you follow the instructions, and that you will find stopping to be fairly easy and far less stressful than any other method you may have tried in the past. It is that simple.

Now, I may have been brain-washed. If I have, I am not complaining. This book totally changed the way I looked at smoking. I used to think of smoking as relaxing. Now I see it as a crutch. I found the smell of the smoke pleasant, even when I was in a ''quitting'' phase. Now I find that it smells disgusting. I cannot imagine why I even started in the first place. I look back, and feel stupid. However, I have not turned into a rabid anti-smoker health nut: I have no trouble with my friends smoking around me.

The book is written by Allen Carr, a 50 year old accountant who used to work in the City of London, and smoked a couple of packs a day. The book was first published in 1985, and the writing style is dated. The jocularity falls flat in places. Strangely enough, the book feels like it's been written for 50-year old accountants.

Nevertheless it works. It involves no patches or replacements. You could call it a variation on the willpower method, but it is really much, much better than that. What the book does is change your mental attitude towards smoking.

A word of warning:

It only works once.

That is all. If you smoke, and want to stop, read this book. Do not restart.