‘The Revolution Was Televised’ returns with an updated edition!

(UPDATE: The book went on sale on Dec. 1, so I’ve updated it with ordering information for various sites.)

Three years ago, I published my second book, “The Revolution Was Televised,” a look at 12 drama series – “Oz,” “The Sopranos,” “The Wire,” “Deadwood,” “The Shield,” “Lost,” “Buffy the Vampire Slayer,” “24,” “Battlestar Galactica,” “Friday Night Lights,” “Mad Men,” and “Breaking Bad” – that helped define the landscape of TV’s new Golden Age.

In a few weeks, a new edition is being released, and since I’ve been getting a lot of questions about it, I figured the easiest way to answer would be right here:

What’s this new edition all about?

Because “Mad Men” and “Breaking Bad” weren’t completed entities at the time the original “Revolution Was Televised” was released, my plan was always to revisit the book once both were off the air. So those chapters have been heavily rewritten – including not only a ton of new stuff about the ends of each show (several thousand words on “Ozymandias” alone), but more material about the early days of both series (Vince Gilligan, for instance, finally told me how he would’ve ended “Breaking Badseason 1 if the writers strike hadn’t happened) – along with smaller revisions to many other chapters (to use two examples, I address David Chase’s recent comments on what did or didn’t happen at the end of “The Sopranos,” and write a bit about “24: Live Another Day”).

Any new shows in there?

Not as the subjects of their own chapters, but there’s a new epilogue that looks at all the changes that have swept across the TV business in the three years since the book was first published. Along the way, I talk about shows like “Game of Thrones,” “Louie,” “True Detective,” and “Transparent” and where they fit into this radically changed landscape.

If I bought the book before as an ebook, do I get the new stuff as a free update?

No. This is its own thing (though the two editions will share an ISBN number, which we’ll get back to momentarily).

That said, if you only want the new versions of the “Mad Men” and “Breaking Bad” chapters, without any of the other new content that’s sprinkled throughout the book, you can buy an ebook single called “Sepinwall on Mad Men and Breaking Bad.”

When does the new version of the book come out, and when can I pre-order it?

The new edition was released on December 1. You can order it at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and wherever books are sold, not only in America, but in many parts of the world.

You can, as previously mentioned, just order the ebook single.

Any other questions, add ’em in the comments and I’ll do my best to answer. Though I suspect several of them will come up in the book’s revised introduction.

×