In Dirty Words in Deadwood: Literature and the Postwestern, Melody Graulich and Nicholas S. Witschi offer a smart collection of 11 essays that deconstruct Deadwood, the HBO series that aired from 2004 to 2006.
They analyze issues like gender roles, physical disability and the musical score. The essays also focus on the show’s self-conscious employment of unpleasant language. The whole is greater than the sum of its parts, as the individual essays are corralled into this thoughtful collection.
—Douglas Brode, author of Shooting Stars of the Small Screen: An Encyclopedia of TV Cowboys Stars.