Some of the dead are still breathing: living in the future

In more than a dozen groundbreaking books and many articles, Charles Bowden has 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 has 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).

In this seminal book, Bowden turns his fearless gaze toward the future, the future we can feel hurtling toward us as fuel reserves dwindle, species die out, terrorism flourishes, the Earth warms, and our ability to be fully awake — alert and impassioned in our lives — wanes. Weaving together natural history, memoir, reportage, and sheer virtuosic writing, he takes us on a furious tour of our emerging reality, his observations from the borderlands — of nations, laws, species, and desire — all the more searing for his refusal to be our scourge.

Bowden has always had the gift of prophecy, but Some of the Dead Are Still Breathing is proof that the times have caught up with his vision. We need that vision now more than ever.