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.

The acclaimed author of Blue Desert explores life on the arid borderlands of southern Arizona. In Desierto, Charles Bowden brings his signature eye for vivid detail and penetrating insight to the Sonoran Desert. Travelling across this unforgiving terrain, he explores struggling desert villages, bitter Indian feuds, and a rich history that transcends borders. He profiles notorious predators from mountain lions to drug lords and land barons. Through...

The author is joined by a retired narcotics cop as they investigate the assassination of a drug dealer and hit man outside Tucson, Arizona. One of Charles Bowden's earliest books, Red Line powerfully conveys a desert civilization careening over the edge—and decaying at its center. Bowden's quest for the literal and figurative truth behind the assassination of a murderous border-town drug dealer becomes a meditation on the glories of the desert landscape,...

Ciudad Juarez lies just across the Rio Grande from El Paso, Texas. A once-thriving border town, it now resembles a failed state. Infamously known as the place where women disappear, its murder rate exceeds that of Baghdad. In Murder City, Charles Bowden-one of the few journalists who spent extended periods of time in Juarez-has written an extraordinary account of what happens when a city disintegrates. Interweaving stories of its inhabitants-a beauty...

The third book in Charles Bowden's "accidental trilogy" that began with Blood Orchid and Blues for Cannibals, Some of the Dead Are Still Breathing attempts to resolve the overarching question: "How can a person live a moral life in a culture of death?" As humanity moves further into the twenty-first century, Bowden continues to interrogate our roles in creating the ravaged landscapes and accumulated death that still surround us, as well as his own...

"I believe every sunrise and I remember the smell of wet grass, the color of robins, and rustle of leaves on the big oaks that outlive nations, all this comes with each sunrise." Sonata marks the sixth and final installment of Charles Bowden's towering "Unnatural History of America" series. While his earlier volumes were suffused with violence and war, Bowden offers here a celebration of rebirth and regrowth. Rendered in Bowden's inimitable style,...

Lionel Bruno Jordan was murdered on January 20, 1995, in an El Paso parking lot, but he keeps coming back as the skeleton key to a multibillion-dollar drug industry, two corrupt governments -- one called the United States and the other Mexico -- and a self-styled War on Drugs that is a fraud. Phil Jordan runs DEA intelligence, but when his brother Bruno is killed, he is powerless. Amado Carrillo Fuentes runs the most successful drug business in the...

Soon to be a major motion picture! “Kill the Messenger” tells the story of the tragic death of Gary Webb, the controversial newspaper reporter who committed suicide in December 2004. Webb is the former San Jose Mercury News reporter whose 1996 "Dark Alliance" series on the so-called CIA, crack cocaine connection created a firestorm of controversy and led to his resignation from the paper amid escalating attacks on his work by the mainstream media....