After the Bombs: A Jericho Retrospective marks two decades of the series with an unprecedented oral history and critical retrospective, drawn from direct access to the show’s creators, cast, and crew
Twenty years after a nuclear conspiracy, twenty-three destroyed American cities, and one small Kansas town captured the imagination of a nation, film critic and journalist Byron Lafayette is releasing After the Bombs: A Jericho Retrospective — the first and definitive account of how Jericho was made, why it was canceled, and how an army of fans refused to let it die.
When Jericho premiered in 2006, it told the story of everyday Americans confronting the unthinkable. When CBS abruptly canceled it, no one expected the show to survive — and no one expected a grassroots fan campaign to force a network to reverse course. As Lafayette’s book reveals, the story behind the camera proved every bit as remarkable as the one on screen.
Marking the series’ 20th anniversary, After the Bombs combines a deeply reported oral history with a series of critical essays examining the show’s enduring themes of survival, community, and moral reckoning. Drawing on extensive access to the people who brought Jericho to life, it is the previously untold story of the show, the people who made it, and the fans who saved it.
Unprecedented Access
The heart of the book is “The Jericho Interviews,” a compiled record of firsthand conversations with the show’s key creative voices — including executive producer Jon Turteltaub, co-creator and showrunner Jonathan Steinberg, showrunner Dan Shotz, executive producer Carol Barbee, director Guy Norman Bee, and cast members including Alicia Coppola, Beth Grant, and Clayne Crawford.
The retrospective features a foreword by Guy Norman Bee
About the Author
Byron Lafayette is the Chairman of the Independent Film Critics of America, the largest independent critics organization in the United States. He is the best-selling author of The Presence Beneath and Of Existential and Monolithic Ideals, and has spent a decade as a film critic and journalist writing for numerous publications. He holds a PhD in Psychology, an influence that runs throughout his books and poetry — and, in After the Bombs, informs a retrospective as concerned with the psychology of survival and community as with the mechanics of television production.
Availability
After the Bombs: A Jericho Retrospective is available in Kindle and softcover editions.
Available now on Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0H9X1FM22
