Books by Charles Bowden

"The first literary biography of Edward Abbey in a generation, this thoughtful memoir serves as a meditation on the writing life, the cult of readers, reputation, and the literary afterlife of a well-known writer"--

In the fifth volume of his "Unnatural History of America" series, the award-winning journalist delivers a powerful meditation on human greed and bloodlust with razor-sharp reporting on Mexican drug cartels at the US border.

The author of Blood Orchid explores the history of the Sioux alongside that of his own family in this posthumous work.When award-winning author Charles Bowden died in 2014, he left behind a trove of unpublished manuscripts. Dakotah marks the landmark publication of the first of these texts, and the fourth installment in his acclaimed ';Unnatural History of America.' Bowden uses America's Great Plains as a lenssometimes sullied, sometimes shattered, but always sharpfor observing pivotal moments in the lives of anguished figures, including himself.In scenes that are by turns wrenching and poetic, Bowden describes the Sioux's forced migrations and rebellions alongside his own ancestors' migrations from Europe to Midwestern acres beset by unforgiving winters. He meditates on the lives of his resourceful mother and his philosophical father, who rambled between farm communities and city life. Interspersed with these images are clear-eyed, textbook-defying anecdotes about Lewis and Clark, Daniel Boone, and, with equal verve, twentieth-century entertainers ';Pee Wee' Russell, Peggy Lee, and other musicians. The result is a kaleidoscopic journey that penetrates the senses and redefines the notion of heartland. Dakotah is a powerful ode to loss from one of our most fiercely independent writers.';[Dakotah] is about hope, disappointment, impermanence and erasure... This is a meditation Bowden fans will not want to miss.' Arizona Daily Star';This posthumous work continues Bowden's uniquely ecocritical writingstarting from human common ground and ending with the ground itselfand allows us to hear his voice long past his own time in earth. It is a worthy offering.' Western American Literature

The third book in Charles Bowden's "Unnatural History of the United States" sextet, Some of the Dead Are Still Breathing continues to interrogate humanity's destructive actions and responsibilities as we move further into the twenty-first century.

The author of Murder City and Down by the River reflects on the destructive nature of American culture.Cultivated from the fierce ideas seeded in Blood Orchid, Blues for Cannibals is an elegiac reflection on death, pain, and a wavering confidence in humanity's own abilities for self-preservation. After years of reporting on border violence, sex crimes, and the devastation of the land, Bowden struggles to make sense of the many ways in which we destroy ourselves and whether there is any way to survive. Here he confronts a murderer facing execution, sex offenders of the most heinous crimes, a suicidal artist, a prisoner obsessed with painting portraits of presidents, and other people and places that constitute our worst impulses and our worst truths. Painful, heartbreaking, and forewarning, Bowden at once tears us apart and yearns for us to find ourselves back together again.';A thrillingly good writer whose grandness of vision is only heightened by the bleak originality of his voice.' Ron Hansen, The New York Times Book Review';A major literary work of profound social consciousness... [Bowden] writes with the intensity of Joan Didion, the voracious hunger of Henry Miller, the feral intelligence and irony of Hunter Thompson, and the wit and outrage of Edward Abbey... This is gutsy, soulful, pyrotechnic, significant. And transformative writing.' Donna Seaman, Chicago Tribune';A vivid, lyrical journey through the American Southwest... [but] this book is no travelogue. Rather, it is a visceral exploration of a much darker landscape, that of the human psyche.' Debra Ginsberg, The San Diego Union-Tribune';A book of absolutely furious beauty... At the height of [Bowden's] rapturous indignation, with majestic lamentations stretching out almost to the snapping point, he sounds like Walt Whitman in a very bad mood... Sweet bloody Jerusalem, when he's cooking, who can touch him?' David Kipen, San Francisco Chronicle

The renowned author explores the violent and corrupt history of America in "e;a haunted, often brilliant journey into the heart of our darkness"e; (Frederick Turner).Blood Orchid is the first volume in Charles Bowden's Unnatural History of America sextet. It is a deeply personal and bracingly sharp chronicle of his quest to unearth our ugly truths. Through stark observations and visceral experiences, Bowden presents a dizzying excavation of the systemic violence and corruption at the roots of American society. Bowden visits dying friends in skid row apartments in Los Angeles, traverses San Francisco byways lined with clubs and joints, and roams through village bars and streets in the Sierra Madre mountains. In these wanderings resides a yearning for the understanding of past and present sins, the human penchant for warfare, abuse, and oppression, and the true war between humanity, the industrialized world, and the immense tolls of our shared land.

Just in time for the 2008 election and the national immigration debate, this searing documentary of the largest single transnational migration in history forces us to face the tremendous human cost of a failed Mexican state and a relentlessly globalizing

With excerpts from his major booksoBlue Desert, Desierto: Memories of the Future, Blood Orchid, Blues for Cannibals, A Shadow in the City, Trinity, and Some of the Dead Are Still Breathingoas well as prominent magazine articles and early journalism, this anthology gathers the best and most representative writing from Charles Bowden's entire career

This striking work of graphic journalism pairs previously unpublished creative nonfiction by Charles Bowden with provocative scratchboard drawings by Alice Leora Briggs to create a vignette of daily life in Juarez, Mexico, in all its surreal brutality and

The costs and limits of using natural resources, demonstrated through a simple example: water.

One of America's foremost environmental writers joins with an acclaimed landscape photographer to create an unmatched portrait of the Sonoran Desert in all its harsh beauty.