For generations now, it has been possible to separate cigar-lovers into two major categories: those who prefer Havanas, and those who don't. It is a difference that can be as crucial to those involved as, say, the difference between a full-bodied red wine and a sweet white.

Certainly, to anyone who enjoys proper tobacco, lighting up a Havana cigar is the first step towards utter hedonism.

With wit and skill, Philippe Mesmer makes a forthrightly chauvinistic comparison between the attractions of women, of spiritous liquors and of the Havana cigar. Plentiful illustrations include old and rare scenic cigar-bands, some with images of the island of Cuba. You might well say that this is a book seeking to find the path to those forms of Paradise that last no longer than an excellent cigar.