In this ground-shaking, breath-taking cri de coeur, Bowden delves with love-driven fury for the roots of our brutal history in this once-brave New World. The figures he casts before us-from Pancho Villa to a modern-day drug lord, from General Sherman to a skid-row Sioux named Robert Sundance-trace a story not so much of rapaciousness as of fear and loathing. Bowden twines it with the natural history of the hammer orchid, a carnivore whose deceptive delicacy comes to stand for the terror and hypocrisy that have perverted our love of the land, its peoples, and our very natures.

Blood Orchid : An Unnatural History of America

Politics & Social Sciences

Charles Bowden

Social Sciences

Bt Bound

Jesse James. Willie Sutton. Bonnie and Clyde. John Dillinger. Charles Keating. Charles Keating? In the pantheon of Americans who have removed from banks what wasn't theirs, Charles Keating stands tall. Over $2 billion tall, to be exact. When the money disappeared from his Lincoln Savings &amp; Loan, now collapsed, Charles Keating was accused of promulgating the largest bank failure in U.S. history. In Trust Me, the bizarre world of Keating is revealed in a financial farce that reads like a collaboration written by Robert Penn Warren, Sinclair Lewis, and Dr. Hunter S. Thompson. See Keating battle Larry Flynt over pornography, give millions to Mother Teresa, and lose $100,000 at a craps table. Watch Keating contribute $1.4 million to five U.S. senators, build a $300 million hotel in the middle of the desert, and toss paper clips into the open mouth of his sleeping heir. Witness armies of federal regulators desperately try to piece together the methods, madness, and mystique of Charles Keating in brave attempts to nab him amid his great adventure. Through it all, Keating has never confessed, begged for mercy, or recanted. Facing over five hundred years in prison, he remains defiant, an American original, a patriot who believes he did nothing wrong. Greed and power should be rewarded, not condemned; Keating simply used the rules to win. Novelistic, captivating, and powerful, Trust Me is a brilliant morality tale about the American way - a red, white, and blue testament to piety and corruption run wild.

Trust Me: Charles Keating and the Missing Billions

Michael Binstein

Business & Money

Random House]

Called "Frog Mountain" by native Tohono O'odham people, the Santa Catalina Mountains offer the citizens of Tucson a wilderness in their own backyard. Over the years it has attracted treasure hunters and entrepreneurs; today recreational facilities dot its summits while resorts and housing development creep up its foothills and into its canyons.Charles Bowden and Jack Dykinga have hiked the Catalinas for years and bring to this book not only a love for the land but the experiences of others who have "lived the mountain." Frog Mountain Blues contrasts the mystery and power of this majestic range with its fragility, and cautions us that this unique wilderness could easily be lost through overuse.By showing the capacity of society to whittle away a whole mountain in pursuit of a "better life," Bowden and Dykinga impress upon us the need for an urbanized society to have wilderness close at hand—both as a retreat from its own insanity and as a reminder of the natural world.

Frog Mountain Blues

History

University of Arizona Press

"Don't let the title fool you. It's about more than street signs: it's about life in the big city; it's about history and the loss of history; it's about neighborhoods that were and never were, but still could be; it's about illusion and the real thing...." Studs Terkel

Street Signs Chicago: Neighborhood and Other Illusions of Big-City Life

Lew Kreinberg

Americas

Chicago Review Press

Don Henry Ford, Jr. is a Texas cowboy, rancher and farmer. In the late 1970s, he was foreman of his father’s ranch and farm in West Texas along the Pecos River. The ranch was going broke. The bankers were knocking at the door. Don went to his Mexican hands, the same guys who were the connection for his own marijuana--smoking inclinations, and they directed him to their contacts on the other side of the Rio Grande. Soon, he was scoring some easy money and he was hooked. For the next seven years, he made his living as an outlaw, smuggling marijuana across the U.S./Mexico border in the Big Bend region. Millions of dollars passed through his hands. He did business with many of the big-name narcotraficantes of the era like Pablo Acosta and Amado Carrillo Fuentes. After being arrested and sent to prison, he escaped and lived for a year in rural northern Mexico, raising a bumper crop of marijuana and hiding out from the federales. Contrabando is a confession, but it’s also an homage to the Mexican paisanos and, indeed, to other outlaws north of the border who became Don Ford’s friends and protectors during his seven years as a smuggler.
Charles Bowden (author of Down by the River, Simon &amp; Schuster, 2003) has written a remarkable introduction to Contrabando, giving an historical perspective to the never-ending “war on drugs” waged by the U.S. government.
In December 1986, the feds caught Don Henry Ford a second time. He was sentenced to 15 years in a maximum security federal penitentiary. He now lives in Seguin, Texas, farming and raising race horses.

Contrabando: Confessions of a Drug-Smuggling Texas Cowboy

Don Henry Ford Jr.

Cinco Puntos Press

Arizona Highways assembled a photographer and two writers, asking each to apply his specialty in relating the Grand Canyon's physical and metaphysical qualities. Their encounters with the Canyon embody decades of experience, and their previous works have garnered awards. The result combines journalistic and impressionistic descriptions, both in words and in photographs.

Grand Canyon: A Photographer's Favorite Viewpoints

Travel

Wayne Ranney

United States

Arizona Highways

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.

Images: Jack Dykinga's Grand Canyon

Arts & Photography

Photography & Video

Orion Magazine asked thirty writers and thinkers to name one thing we will increasingly need over the next thirty years if humans are going to find a way to live happily, sustainably, redeemably on earth. Here is the result. From "optimism' to "improvisation," from "young farmers" to "empty pockets," the responses collected here are as wide-ranging as they are compelling. Imbued with thoughtfulness and buoyed by a profound sense of justice, this thin volume makes an eloquent statement about the future of humanity.

Thirty-Year Plan

Terry Tempest Williams

Pete Seeger

Ralph Nader

Richard Louv

Craig Childs

and 24 other writers

Orion Magazine

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Books by Charles Bowden