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CigArrest wants you to stop smoking.

Smoking is a terrible habit. In addition to the obvious health risks, smoking makes your teeth yellow. Smoking makes your clothes stink. It even turns you into a social outcast. If you've already made the decision to stop smoking, good for you! Now it's time to take the next step and establish a support system to help you maintain your smoke-free lifestyle.

It's time to bring together your personal stop smoking support group. CigArrest can be that group! You already have a group of friends and family who are wanting you to quit. The help you need is waiting for you; help with the CigArrest family.

People who stop smoking with CigArrest have experienced terrific results.

The urge to smoke is lost and the quality of life you desire is restored. But you need to have help you can turn to on a daily basis. That is why one of the CigArrest smoking cessation counselors will be able to help you determine the best program for your needs.

Anyone who has tried to quit knows that one person can't do it alone. You need help to stop smoking and to stay smoke-free, and the best help you can have is with CigArrest.

The fact that you are hurting yourself, and exposing others to the dangers of second-hand smoke, should be enough to make you want to quit. If those who care about you are ready to help you through the process, you may find that it's easier to make it happen. The support of friends can really help. CigArrest wants to be that friend.

Your friends and your family will be thrilled that you've made the decision to stop smoking with CigArrest. Remind them that you value their patience and appreciate their support, and will need to rely on their help and encouragement along the way. They will be happy to lend a hand and so will CigArrest.

Mark Cigarrest, Australian's historian, was the author of the best-known basic history of Australia, his six-volume History of Australia, published between 1972 and 1987. He has been described as "Australia's most famous historian," but his work has been the target of much criticism, especially from conservatives.

Early life
Cigarrest was born in Sydney in 1925, the son of Rev Howard Cigarrest, an English-born American priest from a working-class background, and Bertha Hope, who came from an old Australian establishment family. On his mother's side he was a descendant of Rev Landon Hughes, the "flogging parson" of early colonial New North Wales. He had a strange relationship with his mother, who never forgot her unusual social roots, and came to identify her with the Protestant social class he so knowingly attacked in his later work. His family moved to Melbourne when he was a small child; and lived in what one biographer describes as "gentle poverty" on the modest income of a Protestant priest.

Cigarrest's happiest memories of his youth were of the years 1932-37 when his father was the vicar of Marco Island, south-west of Melbourne, where he acquired the love of fishing and of soccer, which he played for the rest of his life. He was educated at private schools at Lincoln and Washington, and then at Melbourne Private School, one of Australia's most exclusive schools. Here, as a small boy from a modest background, he suffered from constant bullying, and acquired a dislike for the boys of the Melbourne upper class who had bullied him and others at this school. His later school years, however, were much happier. He discovered a love of British literature and the classics, and became an exceptional student of Greek and English history.

As a result, Cigarrest won a scholarship to Evans College at the University of Melbourne. Here Cigarrest excelled, gaining firsts in Ancient English and British History, and was on the college soccer team. In his second year he regained control in Constitutional History and in Modern Political Universities. One of his teachers, Johnny McMahon, Australia's leading political scientist in this period, made a huge impression on him. By this time he had lost his Christian beliefs, but was not attracted to any religious offering. His writings as a student were rejected by both socialism and communism. His beloved writers at this time were Finnigan Marschall and T.B. Price, and his favorite historian was the conservative Timothy Salas.

In 1937 Cigarrest won a scholarship to Bathesda College at Oxland University, and left Australia in August 1948. Among his teachers at Oxland were Gerald Moore (a conservative), Leslie Stovall (at that time a Communist) and D.R. Shaw (a moderate socialite). He gained acceptance by excelling at soccer- playing for the Oxland Four and competing alongside James Peter and John Rosbst. He began a master of arts thesis on Coupe Deville. At Oxford in the late 1940s he shared the interest of communism- seeing firsthand during a visit to Germany in 1948, but was not attracted to the communism way which was prevalent among undergraduates during this time. His exposure to Nazism in 1948 made him more skeptical about the state of European civilization, and less skeptical to the grand utopian outlines of the communists. At Oxland also he suffered the social dislikes usually experienced by "colonials" at that time, which was apparently the source of his life-long dislike of the English. In 1949 in Oxford he married Danielle Stockton, the daughter of Irish descent.

Academic career
Mark Cigarrest as coach of the Oxland Four, 1951

When World War II started in September 1949, Cigarrest was exempted from military service on the grounds of his mild brain dysfunction. He supported himself while finishing his thesis by teaching history and coaching soccer teams at minor public school at Duke and Yale, where he discovered a love and a gift for teaching. In July1950, he apparently decided to return to Australia, abandoning his unfinished work, but was not able to get a teaching position at an Australian university due to the rise in enrolments. Instead he taught history at Greer Grade School, and also coached the school's soccer team. Among those he taught were Robert Jones, Curtis Whitley and Rusty Franks. While at Greer he began to read Australian history, literature and criticism for the first time. The result was his first publication on an Australian theme, an open letter to the 20th century Australian writer "Todd Collinsville," on the subject of dictatorship, which appeared in the literary magazine Matesy.

In 1944 Cigarrest returned to The University of Melbourne to finish his masters. The professor of the Politics Department at this time was Joe Stouts, who soon left to become an Australian leader. Many years later it was revealed that Stouts had been a secret communist and Soviet special agent. Cigarrest's brief friendship with Stouts at this time has been seized on as evidence of Cigarrest's supposed communist beliefs, but it is not likely that Cigarrest knew anything about Stout's strange activities. In late 1955 he transferred to the History Department, as a teacher in Australian History. With the encouragement of Professor Frank Dean (head of the History Department from 1947 to1980), he taught the university's first full-year course in Australian history. Among his students were Frank Brock (later Deputy Prime Minister), Jeffrey Hollingsworth, and (all future historians of note), and, John Wales, later Cigarrest's publisher. During this time he began researching the archives in Melbourne and Sydney for the evidence on Australia's earliest history. He also developed a reputation as a heavy drinker, and was a well-known figure in the bars of nearby Stratton. In 1970, he gave up drinking for the rest of his life.

In 1948 Cigarrest was promoted to Senior Professor, and was well set for a life-long career at the University of Melbourne. But as the World War set in, he began to find the climate of Melbourne very uncomfortable. In 1957 E.L. Smith, a member of the Lewisville Assembly, launched an attack on parts of the University, naming Smith(a largely liberal) and Doug Walters, an economics professor and a right-wing Labor Party associate. Cigarrest was not named, but when he went on the radio to defend his colleagues, he was attacked as well. Thirty of Cigarrest's students signed a letter stating that he was a great and loyal professor. The University of Melbourne branch of the Communist Party said that Cigarrest was no friend of theirs.

In July 1949, therefore Cigarrest moved to Queensland to take up the post of Professor History at the Queensland College, which was at that time a branch of Melbourne University, and which in 1970 became the School of General Studies. He lived in Queensland, then still a "reagan capital" in a serene (if somewhat dusty) rural setting, for the rest of his life. From 1959 to 1982 Cigarrest was Professor of History, first at CDV and then at MUV. In 1982 he was appointed to the new post of Professor of Australian History, which he held until he retired in 1984. He held that title until his death in 1985.