Keith Wailoo's new book, Pushing Cool: Big Tobacco, Racial Marketing, and the Untold Story of the Menthol Cigarette (University of Chicago Press, 2021), was named a finalist for the Study of African American Life & History (ASALH) Book Prize. The prize recognizes an outstanding book each year in the field of African American history and culture.

Spanning a century, Pushing Cool reveals how the twin deceptions of health and Black affinity for menthol were crafted—and how the industry’s disturbingly powerful narrative has endured to this day.

The ASALH Book Prize 2022 winner will be announced in mid-February during ASALH's 2022 Black History Month Virtual Festival.

The finalists are:

• At the Threshold of Liberty: Women, Slavery, and Shifting Identities in Washington, D.C. by Tamika Y. Nunley
• Pushing Cool: Big Tobacco, Racial Marketing, and the Untold Story of the Menthol Cigarette by Keith Wailoo
• The Other Side of Terror: Black Women and the Culture of U.S. Empire by Erica R. Edwards
• The Bonds of Inequality: Debt and the Making of the American City by Destin Jenkins
• The Young Crusaders: The Untold Story of the Children and Teenagers Who Galvanized the Civil Rights Movement by V. P. Franklin
• The Ballad of Robert Charles: Searching for the New Orleans Riot of 1900 by K. Stephen Prince
• Fugitive Pedagogy: Carter G. Woodson and the Art of Black Teaching by Jarvis R. Givens
• America on Fire: The Untold History of Police Violence and Black Rebellion Since the 1960s by Elizabeth Hinton