Peter Cozzens — Deadwood: Gold, Guns, and Greed in the American West - with Ronald Collins

Sifting through layers and layers of myth and legend--from nineteenth-century dime novels like Deadwood Dick, to HBO prestige dramas to the casino billboards outside of present-day Deadwood--Peter Cozzens unveils the true face of Deadwood, South Dakota, the storied mining town that sprang up in early 1876 and came raining down in ashes only three years later, destined to become food for the imagination and a nostalgic landmark that now brings in more than two and a half million visitors each year.That Western romance, we're reminded by Cozzens--the prizewinning author of The Earth Is Weeping--retains its allure only as long as we willfully ignore the town's foundational sins. Built on land brazenly stolen from the Lakotas, Deadwood was not merely a place where outlaws lurked, like Tombstone or Dodge City, but was itself an outlaw enterprise, not part of any U.S. territory or subject to U.S. laws or governance. This gave rise to the gunslinging, stagecoach robbing, whiskey guzzling, rampant prostitution, and gambling Deadwood is known for. But it also bred a self-reliance and a spirit of cooperation unique on the frontier, and made it an exceptionally welcoming place for Black Americans and Chinese immigrants at a time of deep-seated discrimination.The first book to tell this complex story in full, Deadwood reveals how one frontier town came to embody the best and worst of the West--a relic of humanity's eternal quest to create order from chaos, a greater good from individual greed, and security from violence.PURCHASE BOOK HERE: https://politics-prose.com/book/9780593537855?ic_referral=Jx70pvrndakwtoPKshJEt82QvEVTCKWNh7epNoh41gwwM8GU-yZc7ETKj88jVA565ZoMhEH8_umsQaVee27PpePjsdnhOSCCl5Gwya844N3OMrjEqPWk_ZHD6qKgXhzzWEnkYBwPeter Cozzens is the author or editor of eighteen acclaimed books on the American Civil War and the American Indian Wars. In 2002 he was awarded the American Foreign Service Association's highest honor, the William R. Rivkin Award, given annually to one foreign service officer for exemplary moral courage, integrity, and creative dissent. He lives in Kensington, Maryland.Cozzens is in conversation with Ronald Collins. Collins is a retired law professor, co-founder of the History Book Festival, and  co-founder and co-chair of the First Amendment Salons. He is the editor of the weekly online blog First Amendment News ]and editor of Attention (an online journal on the life and legacy of Simone Weil). He is also the Lewes Public Library's Distinguished Lecturer. He is the author or co-author of 13 books on topics ranging from free speech to racial justice, from robotics to poetry, and from literature to jurisprudence. His biographical works have profiled the likes of Floyd Abrams, Lenny Bruce, Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Simone Weil, and Emmett Till. He served as a Supreme Court fellow under Chief Justice Warren Berger and later was a Norman Mailer fellow. His latest book is Tragedy on Trial: The Story of the Infamous Emmett Till Murder Trial (2024). His next book is a novel titled Forbidden Freedom.