The Wire: Race, Class, and Genre (Class : Culture)

"This bravura collection of essays ratifies the opinion of millions of worldwide fans: The Wire is the urban Grapes of Wrath, with characters as vivid and enduring, and truths as radical and plain-spoken, as those in Steinbeck's masterpiece."
--Mike Davis, University of California, Riverside

"Across its seasons, The Wire set out to combine a highly entertaining television experience with trenchant social argument. In comparable fashion, the essays in this volume take on the challenge of offering consequential cultural analysis in a compelling manner, and they amply provide myriad insights expressed with verve and vitality. A rich, important collection."
--Dana Polan, New York University

"Kennedy and Shapiro have assembled a stellar collection of essays -- these consistently smart and engaging pieces illustrate how high quality crime tv operates as a premiere showcase for the tensions and predicaments of early twenty-first century American life and how The Wire in particular emerges as a crucial, compelling cultural text."
--Diane Negra, University College Dublin