Deadwood: Gold, Guns, and Greed in the American West
"How did such a small, remote speck of a place come to loom so large in American lore and myth? With Peter Cozzens' artful book, we get the answer. In these pungent pages, you can smell the whiskey, the gun smoke, the horse lather, the gold dust, and the mining chemicals. And you start to see Deadwood as something more, as a node of raw avarice and frank ambition reflecting larger American impulses that are still alive today. Deadwood isn't dead. It lives on in legend, in pulp Westerns, films, and television shows, and now, in the pages of a fine non-fiction narrative that's as alluring as its subject." —Hampton Sides, NYT bestselling author of Blood and Thunder and The Wide Wide Sea
"Peter Cozzens' Deadwood is a sweeping saga of greed, stolen Indigenous land, and legendary westerners such as Wild Bill Hickok, Seth Bullock, and Lakota leader Crazy Horse. With the in-depth research Cozzens is known for, thought-provoking new insights, and a narrative that moves along at a fast clip, readers of Deadwood are guaranteed to hit pay dirt on every page." --Mark Lee Gardner, author of Brothers of the Gun: Wyatt Earp, Doc Holliday, and a Reckoning in Tombstone
"What a perfect marriage—one of the most exquisite chroniclers of America's Wild West exploring the most notorious town of the era. Throughout Deadwood, Cozzens brings fresh drama and absorbing detail to paint a vivid portrait of the colorful characters who, in just three short years, etched this tiny, if hellraising, South Dakota mining community into the lore of our collective history. Exemplary in all respects, thanks to the author's storytelling skills, Deadwood lives again." —Tom Clavin and Bob Drury, bestselling authors of Blood and Treasure and Throne of Grace
"There is no western town more steeped in myth, legend, and fairy tale than Deadwood, South Dakota—not even Tombstone, Leadville, or Dodge City. It was the Wild West of dime novels, of breathless, not-quite-exactly-true accounts in the newspapers. What Peter Cozzens has done with this remarkable book is to show us that the truth about Deadwood is, in fact, even more interesting than the myth." —S. C. Gwynne, author of NYT Bestseller Empire of the Summer Moon
"A master historian confronts the mystique of the wildest of the Wild West towns—a place shrouded in frontier myth and gilded Hollywood romance—and the result is a fast-paced, superbly written narrative marked with all the usual Peter Cozzens graceful touches. A dream team of fabulous characters—Wild Bill Hickok, Calamity Jane, Crazy Horse, Seth Bullock, George Hearst, Al Swearingen—helps the author to craft a marvelous true tale of deception, greed, and violence far stranger than any fiction. Here is Western history with the bark on!" - Paul Andrew Hutton, author of The Undiscovered Country