The Charles Bowden Reader »

The author of twenty-six books, CHARLES BOWDEN has also been a contributing editor for GQ, Harper's, Esquire, and Mother Jones. His best-known work focuses on the U.S.-Mexico border, which engrosses him because it is a trip wire for issues--migration spawned by global inequality, the rise of stateless criminal cartels--that will shape the twenty-first century.

ERIN ALMERANTI is a writer, editor, and teacher living in Tucson.

MARY MARTHA MILES, a college English instructor, radio disk jockey, and writer, is a longtime friend of Charles Bowden.

JIM HARRISON is the author of thirty books of poetry, fiction, and nonfiction. He has recently published The Farmer's Daughter and In Search of Small Gods, a book of poems. He is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters.

From his first book, Killing the Hidden Waters, to his most recent, Murder City: Cuidad Juárez 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--Killing the Hidden Waters, Blue Desert, Desierto: Memories of the Future, Blood Orchid, Blues for Cannibals, A Shadow in the City, Inferno, Exodus, and Some of the Dead Are Still Breathing--as well as articles that appeared in Esquire, Harper's, Mother Jones, and other 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.

The perfect introduction to his work, The Charles Bowden Reader is also essential for those who know him well and want to see the whole panorama of his passionate, intense writing.

Foreword Jim Harrison vii

Introduction by the Editors ix

Part I

Coming to Arizona, from Arizona Highways 3

Bats, from Blue Desert 7

Speech Excerpt from North Dakota Geological Conference 16

Excerpt from Killing the Hidden Waters 18

Snaketime, from Wild Earth 27

Excerpt from Inferno 39

Part II

One Thing in Common: Sadness, from the Tucson Citizen 47

Excerpt from "Using Our Children for Sex," from the Tucson Citizen 51

Rape, from the Tucson Citizen 53

Torch Song, from Harper's 78

Part III

Excerpt from the 2008 Photography Exhibit "The History of the Future" 101

While You Were Sleeping, from Harper's 105

Don Francisco Must Be Stopped, from USA Today 122

Excerpt from Exodus 124

Outback Nightmares and Refugee Dreams, from Mother Jones 133

Part IV

Excerpt from Shadow in the City 149

The Pariah, from Esquire 159

Ike and Lyndon, from Harper's 183

Extraordinary Rendition 204

Epilogue on Edward Abbey 215

The Bone Garden of Desire, from Esquire 220

Part V

Letter to Barbara Houlberg 237

Excerpt from Some of the Dead Are Still Breathing 239

Excerpt from Desierto: Memories of the Future 242

Excerpt from Blues for Cannibals 245

Excerpt from Killing the Hidden Waters 252

Excerpt from Blood Orchid 255

Excerpt from Blues for Cannibals 266

Excerpt from Desierto; Memories of the Future 269

Excerpt from Inferno 273

Afterword: Excerpt from Some of the Dead Are Still Breathing 283