The Wire
Truth Be Told
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3.6 • 23 Ratings
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- $11.99
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- $11.99
Publisher Description
Welcome to the critically acclaimed HBO drama series The Wire, hailed as "the best show on television, period" by the San Francisco Chronicle. The New York Times calls it "a vital part of the television landscape...unvarnished realism." Time declares that The Wire, "like its underfunded, workaday cops, just plugged away until it outshone everything else on TV."
The Wire stands not only as riveting drama but also as a sociopolitical treatise with ambitions beyond any television serial. The failure of the drug war, the betrayal of the working class, the
bureaucratization of the culture and the cost to individual dignity -- such are the themes of the drama's first two seasons. And with every new episode of season three and beyond, another layer of modern urban life will be revealed. Gritty, densely layered, and realistic, The Wire is series television at its very best, told from the point of view of the Baltimore police, their targets, and many of those caught in the middle.
Rafael Alvarez -- a reporter, essayist, and staff writer for the show -- brings the reader inside, detailing many of the real-life incidents
and personalities that have inspired the show's storylines and characters, providing the reader with insights into the city of Baltimore -- itself an undeniable character in the series. Packed with photographs and featuring an introduction by series creator and executive producer David Simon, as well as essays by acclaimed authors
George Pelecanos, Laura Lippman, and Anthony Walton, here is an invaluable resource for both fans of the show and viewers who have
yet to discover The Wire.
Hollywood has long used the cop drama to excite and entertain, and Hollywood has always dictated the terms. But The Wire is filmed entirely in Baltimore, conceived by Baltimoreans, and written by rust-belt journalists and novelists intimately familiar with the urban landscape. It's as close as television has yet come to allowing
an American city to tell its own tale.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
After HBO launched its gritty, Baltimore-based series, The Wire, in 2002, it ran for five seasons and 60 episodes. The show was created by former Baltimore Sun crime reporter Simon, who pitched the drama series as an anti cop show and as a novel for television, bolstering his writing staff with such novelists as Richard Price, Dennis Lehane, and George Pelecanos. Initially perceived as a crime show, Simon wanted to explore larger themes of politics, sociology, and economics while depicting all angles of life in Baltimore, from news media mediocrity to the life of addicts, dealers, whores, johns, and the homeless: This is the world of The Wire, the America left behind. Low ratings were followed by critical acclaim. In addition to detailed episode guides, total cast/character breakdowns, crew listings, 300+ b&w photos, and a glossary of the street slang employed in the show's dialogue, the book includes a dozen insightful, informative contributions by a variety of journalists, directors, screenwriters, and novelists, including Pelecanos, Laura Lippman, and Nick Hornby, who interviewed Simon. Other interviews include Little Melvin Williams, one of the legendary kingpins in the annals of Baltimore narcotics, who from prison went into the show's third-season cast. Weaving a sprawling tapestry of both the TV drama and the Baltimore cityscape, Alvarez, a Baltimore Sun reporter for 20 years and The Wire staff writer, has compiled engrossing, definitive coverage certain to lure HBO viewers into bookstores.
Customer Reviews
Gritty, real.
Growing up in Baltimore and getting caught up in the heroin epidemic that led me to getting arrested numerous times and working with the police to subtract my petty drug charges and to try and help clean up the city, I can attest of the realism of these stories. I've since then I Imoved to NYC to try and leave that part of my life behind and though not living in Baltimore is working for my addiction by taking myself out of the equation, I still bleed Baltimore and no matter where I go, that's the way it is.
The Wire
Don't bother!