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Frontmatter -- Contents -- Introduction -- BEGINNINGS -- Over the Rainbow -- On Campus -- Taking History Off Campus -- Street Signs with Lew Kreinberg and Charles Bowden -- Chuck Becomes a Reporter -- Let the Tortoises Roll -- The Jimi Hendrix of Journalism -- BOWDEN’S SOUTHWEST -- Stand My Watch -- Give Light to the Air -- How’s My Government? -- Discovering Chuck -- Mr. Southwest -- Chuck’s Desert Garden -- Planting Trees -- A Man for All Seasons -- Chuck Bowden in the Twilight Zone -- The Most Fearless Writer in America -- PUBLISHING CHUCK -- Writing in the Moment -- The Big Kick: Editing Chuck -- Of Rock ’n’ Roll and Corn Laws: A Few Words on Charles Bowden -- Sketches of Chuck -- Assembling a Bowden Bibliography -- Lessons from Anger and Love -- COLLABORATORS -- Interviewing a Tire -- Dickens, Melville, and Bowden -- Over the Line -- Heart’s Desire -- White, Red, and Black -- Traveling and Not Traveling with Chuck -- TRAILING BOWDEN -- Bowden’s Need to Walk -- Bowden Nails the Door Shut behind Us -- Muir, Abbey, Bowden -- A Desert Evening with Chuck -- The Mesquite Tree and the Endless Loop -- WRITERS ON BOWDEN -- America’s Most Alarming Writer -- He Heard the Music -- Charles Bowden and La Santa Muerte -- The License Plate Said “Hayduke”: Chuck Bowden and the Red Cadillac—A Memory -- Scratchboard Opposites -- Drawn to the Flames: Bowden and Agee, Expanding the Boundaries of American Nonfiction -- Wild Gods of Mexico -- Crossing the Line -- The Fountain Theatre -- Pure Bowden -- Street Reporter on La Línea -- No One Gets Out Al -- CODA -- Here Stands a Reporter -- Packing Chuck’s Legacy -- Mary Martha Miles -- I Have Had to Make Up My Life As I Went Along -- Acknowledgments -- Copyright and Credits -- Index The author of more than twenty books and a revered contributor to numerous national publications, Charles Bowden (1945–2014) used his keen storyteller’s eye to reveal both the dark underbelly and the glorious determination of humanity, particularly in the borderlands between the United States and Mexico. In America’s Most Alarming Writer, key figures in his life—including his editors, collaborators, and other writers—deliver a literary wake for the man who inspired them throughout his forty-year career. Part revelation, part critical assessment, the fifty essays in this collection span the decades from Bowden’s rise as an investigative journalist through his years as a singular voice of unflinching honesty about natural history, climate change, globalization, drugs, and violence. As the Chicago Tribune noted, “Bowden wrote 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.” An evocative complement to The Charles Bowden Reader, the essays and photographs in this homage brilliantly capture the spirit of a great writer with a quintessentially American vision. Bowden is the best writer you’ve (n)ever read
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