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The Southwestern desert—that tumultuous "zone claimed by two nations, and controlled by no one"—is Charles Bowden's home and enduring passion. In acclaimed books ranging from A Shadow in the Confessions of an Undercover Drug Warrior and Down by the Drugs, Money, Murder, and Family to Inferno and Exodus/Éxodo, Bowden has written eloquently about issues that plague the border region—the smuggling of drugs and people and the violence that accompanies it, the rape of the environment and the greed that drives it. Completing a trilogy that includes Inferno and Exodus/Éxodo, Bowden looks back in Trinity across centuries of human history in the border region to offer his most encompassing and damning indictment of "the murder of the earth all around me." Sparing no one, Bowden recounts how everyone who has laid claim to the Southwestern desert—Native Americans, Spain, Mexico, and the United States—has attempted to control and domesticate this ecologically fragile region, often with devastating consequences. He reserves special scorn for the U.S. government, whose attempts at control have provoked consequences ranging from the massive land grab of the Mexican War in the nineteenth century, to the nuclear fallout of the first atomic bomb test in the twentieth century, to the police state that is currently growing up around attempts to seal the border and fight terrorism. Providing a stunning visual counterpoint to Bowden's words, Michael Berman's photographs of the desert reveal both its harsh beauty and the scars it bears after centuries of human abuse. Bowden's clearest warning yet about the perils facing the desert he calls home, Trinity confirms that, in his words, "the [border] zone is a laboratory where the delusions of life—economic, religious, military, foreign policy, biological, and agricultural—can be tested. This time the edge is the center, this time the edge is the face of the future."
272 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 2009
17 people want to read
About the author
Charles Bowden
67 books184 followersCharles Bowden was an American non-fiction author, journalist and essayist based in Las Cruces, New Mexico.
His journalism appeared regularly in Harper’s GQ, and other national publications. He was the author of several books of nonfiction, including Down by the River.
In more than a dozen groundbreaking books and many articles, Charles Bowden blazed a trail of fire from the deserts of the Southwest to the centers of power where abstract ideas of human nature hold sway — and to the roiling places that give such ideas the lie. He claimed as his turf "our soul history, the germinal material, vast and brooding, that is always left out of more orthodox (all of them) books about America" (Jim Harrison, on Blood Orchid ).
His journalism appeared regularly in Harper’s GQ, and other national publications. He was the author of several books of nonfiction, including Down by the River.
In more than a dozen groundbreaking books and many articles, Charles Bowden blazed a trail of fire from the deserts of the Southwest to the centers of power where abstract ideas of human nature hold sway — and to the roiling places that give such ideas the lie. He claimed as his turf "our soul history, the germinal material, vast and brooding, that is always left out of more orthodox (all of them) books about America" (Jim Harrison, on Blood Orchid ).
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June 18, 2014
Bowden is the only public saint. His sainthood rests upon his two miracles of resisting civilization and living to tell about it. These citations might want to be revisited someday:
12 Mammoths of the Black Hills. "Every single trapped mammoth was a young male, some willful spirit that went down into the hole where hot water bubbled and lush gasses grew and could never climb out again." Not to blame the Mammoth for being so dumb, I put a little pool of honey on the counter and all the little ants, male and female, although the anatomy is assumed, ran down and got all caught in the stickim. Jus sayin.
19 Transhuman. 1860s, General James Henry Carleton forces Navajo into Bosque Redondo: "In their appointed time God wills that one race of men--as in the races of lower animals--shall disappear off the face of the earth and give place to another race."
31 Crows. Cf Barry Lopez, Desert Notes. When scientists at U of Wash went out to capture birds vocalizations of sounds gave warning to separate the dangerous scientists from the 40,000 students.
32 Rilke of Cezanne. "Surely all art is the result of one's having been in danger, of having gone through an experience all the way to the end, where no one can go any further." Crime and punishment: "Talking nonsense is man's only privilege that distinguished him from all other organisms."
34 Peterborough Bestiary
116 Science. "By 1916 Adler...the time will come when the scientist will be considered himself a disgrace to the human race who prostitutes his knowledge of Nature's forces for the destruction of his fellow men."
194 literature of captivity. "People like Herman return to nature and murder and rape and raid and small children are slaughtered and then he comes back and is appalled to find his white family eating pork and fish and...the enormity of experience they swallowed and the paltry rations we taste."
207 War. "one of my uncles home from the Pacific War...told me of cutting off the heads of Japanese soldiers, boiling them down and mounting the skulls on his jeep. And then the silence returns and he never breaks it again."
212 Physics. "the Atomic Energy Commission is bankrolling 90 percent of all physics students. Science shifts from an effort to understand nature to being a weapons industry."
220 Rock " I can feel a crumbling of things, and I can feel the rock that Peter thought he stood on but it is not in Rome, it is running wild and free in the burning land of my life."
223 Exceptionalism. "My culture is based on something scholars call exceptionalism, a variation of the idea of chosen people who are exempt from the vices and limits of other people. This belief runs through our presidents and their talks-it is there even before the presidents in the genesis of the Declaration, it is at the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia, fires guns at the Battle of New Orleans, marches into Mexico...and never doubts the ground will bend to our will and flow into our gorge
231 Lewis Moreau Gottschalk
203, 234-5 Simultaneity of events, simulcast "some of us are quick and some of us are dead but all of us are alive. History always is for me and never was for me. Juh waits on the hilltop, Geronimo has climbed the mountain to make medicine so that his sister will live, the mammoth moves down the wash, Mangas stares out at the Butterfield stage suddenly rolling across the desert, Billy rides free as the breeze and Pat Garrett seem men as just one more buffalo in his sights...we keep riding."
12 Mammoths of the Black Hills. "Every single trapped mammoth was a young male, some willful spirit that went down into the hole where hot water bubbled and lush gasses grew and could never climb out again." Not to blame the Mammoth for being so dumb, I put a little pool of honey on the counter and all the little ants, male and female, although the anatomy is assumed, ran down and got all caught in the stickim. Jus sayin.
19 Transhuman. 1860s, General James Henry Carleton forces Navajo into Bosque Redondo: "In their appointed time God wills that one race of men--as in the races of lower animals--shall disappear off the face of the earth and give place to another race."
31 Crows. Cf Barry Lopez, Desert Notes. When scientists at U of Wash went out to capture birds vocalizations of sounds gave warning to separate the dangerous scientists from the 40,000 students.
32 Rilke of Cezanne. "Surely all art is the result of one's having been in danger, of having gone through an experience all the way to the end, where no one can go any further." Crime and punishment: "Talking nonsense is man's only privilege that distinguished him from all other organisms."
34 Peterborough Bestiary
116 Science. "By 1916 Adler...the time will come when the scientist will be considered himself a disgrace to the human race who prostitutes his knowledge of Nature's forces for the destruction of his fellow men."
194 literature of captivity. "People like Herman return to nature and murder and rape and raid and small children are slaughtered and then he comes back and is appalled to find his white family eating pork and fish and...the enormity of experience they swallowed and the paltry rations we taste."
207 War. "one of my uncles home from the Pacific War...told me of cutting off the heads of Japanese soldiers, boiling them down and mounting the skulls on his jeep. And then the silence returns and he never breaks it again."
212 Physics. "the Atomic Energy Commission is bankrolling 90 percent of all physics students. Science shifts from an effort to understand nature to being a weapons industry."
220 Rock " I can feel a crumbling of things, and I can feel the rock that Peter thought he stood on but it is not in Rome, it is running wild and free in the burning land of my life."
223 Exceptionalism. "My culture is based on something scholars call exceptionalism, a variation of the idea of chosen people who are exempt from the vices and limits of other people. This belief runs through our presidents and their talks-it is there even before the presidents in the genesis of the Declaration, it is at the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia, fires guns at the Battle of New Orleans, marches into Mexico...and never doubts the ground will bend to our will and flow into our gorge
231 Lewis Moreau Gottschalk
203, 234-5 Simultaneity of events, simulcast "some of us are quick and some of us are dead but all of us are alive. History always is for me and never was for me. Juh waits on the hilltop, Geronimo has climbed the mountain to make medicine so that his sister will live, the mammoth moves down the wash, Mangas stares out at the Butterfield stage suddenly rolling across the desert, Billy rides free as the breeze and Pat Garrett seem men as just one more buffalo in his sights...we keep riding."
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