Charles Bowden Knihy

From his first book, Killing the Hidden Waters, to his most recent, Murder City: Cuidad Juarez and the Global Economy's New Killing Fields, Charles Bowden has been sounding an alarm about the rapacious appetites of human beings and the devastation we inflict on the natural world we arrogantly claim to possess. His own corner of the world, the desert borderlands between the United States and Mexico, is Bowden's prime focus, and through books, magazine articles, and newspaper journalism he has written eloquently about key issues roiling the border—drug-related violence that is shredding civil society, illegal immigration and its toll on human lives and the environment, destruction of fragile ecosystems as cities sprawl across the desert and suck up the limited supplies of water. This anthology gathers the best and most representative writing from Charles Bowden's entire career. It includes excerpts from his major books as well as articles that appeared in various publications. Imbued with Bowden's distinctive rhythm and lyrical prose, these pieces also document his journey of exploration—a journey guided, in large part, by the question posed in Some of the Dead Are Still Breathing: "How do we live a moral life in a culture of death?" This is no metaphor; Bowden is referring to the people, history, animals, and ecosystems that are being extinguished in the onslaught of twenty-first-century culture.

Praise for Mezcal: "Mezcal is also a lyrical meditation upon the ultimate strength of the land, specifically the desert Southwest, and how that land prevails and endures despite every effort of modern industry and development to rape and savage it in the name of progress. Mezcal lingers in the mind as only the very best books manage to do."—Harry Crews "The author . . . excavates his own tormented life—and its relation to the land he loves—in a series of powerful, imagistic autobiographical essays. Like the desert he cherishes, this memoir is harsh yet lovely, full of sour self-truth. . . . A potent presentation of the wounds of one man's life, packed with indelible impressions; but there's little healing here, making this a bitter if beautiful read."—Kirkus Review "In Mezcal . . . Bowden drops the journalistic veil, exploring the ecology of his interior landscape at least as thoroughly as the changing scenery that surrounds him. . . . Others—Aldo Leopold, Edward Abbey—have already staked inviolate claims on the Southwestern deserts. But Bowden owns the complex terrain where, like a mezcal-inspired mirage, the Sonoran sun-belt overlaps the gray convolutions of the American mind."—Los Angeles Times

“ìThis landscape is remarkable. . . . The heart of canyon country may be stone, but its soul, which Dykinga reveals so well, is as alluring as it is enduring.” —Nature’s Best Now in paperback, this volume explores two little-known canyon systems just north of the Grand Canyon National Park. Jack W. Dykinga’s glorious photographs reveal stunning desert vistas and sheer, slick, red rock, while Charles Bowden’s tales of the stark region make clear why early Spanish explorers called the land “Sal Si Puedes”—“Get Out If You Can.” Together, the author and photographer of Abrams’ The Sonoran Desert have produced a dramatic tribute to one of the most desolate and beautiful natural wildernesses remaining in North America.

Joey O'Shay is not the real name of the narcotics agent in an unnamed city in the center of the country. But Joey O'Shay exists. The nearly 300 drug busts he has orchestrated over more than two decades are real, too. The author follows O'Shay as he sets in motion his latest conquest, a $50 million heroin deal that originates in Colombia and has federal agents sitting at attention from Los Angeles to Washington, D.C., to New York City.

The stunning vistas of the Grand Canyon come alive through the photography of Pulitzer Prize winner Jack Dykinga. Complementing the photography, award-winning writers Charles Bowden and Wayne Ranney offer unique perspectives on the Canyon s magnificent beauty and the theories surrounding its fascinating formation.

From the award-winning, critically acclaimed Charles Bowden, a stunning work of reportage on Ciudad Juarez--the blood-soaked town caught in the crosshairs of Mexico's escalating drug wars