Bloomsbury The Last Western: Deadwood and the End of American Empire

Review The Last Western is laudable in its efforts to draw attention to Deadwood and its role in what has at times been called a new era of television. There are readings in this anthology which should be of interest for anyone working on Deadwood or television studies. -- Tonje Haugland Sorensen, University of Bergen ― Historical Journal of Film, Radio and TelevisionScholars and students interested in Deadwood and HBO will find much that is useful, as will scholars interested in how television drama can articulate anxieties and concerns about contemporary issues via historical or generic forms. Summing Up: Highly recommended. General readers, undergraduate students, graduate students, and research faculty. -- S. Pepper, Northeastern Illinois University ― CHOICEThe collections handily meet the challenge that vexes much writing about film, an ephemeral genre in which retelling can overshadow reflection. One way the various essayists accomplish this is by recalling powerful scenes from Deadwood that form indelible tableaus … These essayists represent perspectives not only from literary studies but from political science, film studies, and history. -- Judy Nolte Temple, University of Arizona, Tucson ― Western American LiteratureAnchored by the editors' incisive introduction, this timely volume goes a long way to redress the dearth of scholarship on one of the richest television dramas in recent years. One of the book's particular strengths--rare for an anthology of this nature--is its focus; from a variety of disciplinary perspectives, the contributors plumb the intersection of Deadwood's visual style, its treatment of genre, and its exploration of political economy at the formation and waning of the American empire. Several of the chapters will be required reading for my course on contemporary American television. -- Ted Nanicelli, Lecturer, Screen and Media Studies, University of Waikato, NZ ― EndorsementThis wonderfully thought-provoking book invites the reader to “Go West!” And here, the journey West is also a journey in -- into the heart of the anxieties and desires that continue to shape contemporary experiences of American Empire. -- Rebecca Johnson, Professor, Faculty of Law, University of Victoria, Canada ― EndorsementBy initially seating David Milch's Deadwood among the other significant HBO shows that interrogate American iconography and culture at the turn of this century, The Sopranos and The Wire, Stasi and Greiman have managed to produce a surprisingly cohesive examination of what they call "The Last Western" through a variety of academic voices and disciplines. What results is a useful volume of essays that at once consider a diversity of concerns in the show, political, social, and familial, while still supporting a central argument that this unfinished series may represent a new understanding of the limits of the Western in narrating American hopes and anxieties as well as providing an important acknowledgment that those same hopes and anxieties continue to haunt contemporary American life. This is a must have volume for those seeking to delve further into the significance of the all-too-short-lived series but also to those interested in understanding how popular media reflects and refracts the conflicts of a contemporary American experience. -- G. Christopher Williams, Associate Professor of English University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point, US, and Multimedia Editor at PopMatters.com ― Endorsement Product Description Perhaps the most sophisticated and complex of shows in HBO's recent history, Deadwood has surprisingly little coverage in our current scholarship. Grounding contemporary anxieties about race and class, domesticity and American exceptionalism in its nineteenth-century setting, Deadwood revises our understanding of a formative period for the American nation through a re-examination of one of the main genres through which this national story has been transmitted: the Western. With contribu