A brief encounter with an older woman in a coffee shop left Emily Flake swearing she would quit smoking when she turned twenty-nine. Only twenty-one at the time, she had years ahead of her to kick the habit. And then she turned twenty-eight, took a good, hard look in the mirror, and knew something had to be done.

These Things Ain't Gonna Smoke Themselves is a hilarious, illustrated account of her love/hate relationship with cigarettes, from her first glorious drag to her not-so-final last puff, and everything she goes through to try to quit. It is a funny, candid exploration of the rise and fall of cigarettes, both within Emily's own life and in society at large, tracing how smoking mutated from an encouraged form of recreation to what it is today-a nasty, unpardonable habit.