Chuck Bowden smoldered. He was a volcano, and he bled for us. Pure courage, he never wavered, shifting from his earlier genre of Thoreau-esque, outdoor meditation to hard-boiled organized crime coverage of a horrific and dangerous nature. His style was elemental, raw, alternating between a love of the region and its people, and a healthy cynicism for human greed. He’s already missed. Glad my bookshelf is pretty well loaded.

Stu Williams
San Diego, California

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Love and cynicism

by Stu Williams, High Country News
November 10, 2014

<h1>Love and cynicism</h1> <p class="byline">by Stu Williams, High Country News <br />November 10, 2014</p> <p><a class="external-link" target="_blank" title="" href="http://country-survey-collabs.info/issues/46.17/charles-bowdens-fury" rel="noopener">Chuck Bowden</a> smoldered. He was a volcano, and he bled for us. Pure courage, he never wavered, shifting from his earlier genre of Thoreau-esque, outdoor meditation to hard-boiled organized crime coverage of a horrific and dangerous nature. His style was elemental, raw, alternating between a love of the region and its people, and a healthy cynicism for human greed. He’s already missed. Glad my bookshelf is pretty well loaded.</p> <p><em>Stu Williams</em><br /><em>San Diego, California</em></p> <div class="wp-block-group hcn-print-edition-box"> <p>This article appeared in the <a href="/?p=187177">print edition of the magazine</a> with the headline <span class="hcn-magtitle">Love and cynicism</span>.</p> </p></div> <p>This &lt;a target=&quot;_blank&quot; href=&quot;https://country-survey-collabs.info/issues/46-19/love-and-cynicism/&quot;&gt;article&lt;/a&gt; first appeared on &lt;a target=&quot;_blank&quot; href=&quot;https://country-survey-collabs.info Country News&lt;/a&gt; and is republished here under a &lt;a target=&quot;_blank&quot; href=&quot;https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/&quot;&gt;Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;img src=&quot;https://i0.wp.com/www.hcn.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/05/cropped-HCN_Logo-Monogram_White_Sq-2.png?resize=150%2C150&amp;amp;quality=100&amp;amp;ssl=1&quot; style=&quot;width:1em;height:1em;margin-left:10px;&quot;&gt;&lt;img id=&quot;republication-tracker-tool-source&quot; src=&quot;https://country-survey-collabs.info/?republication-pixel=true&amp;post=117350&amp;amp;ga4=G-0NS3WVPPTN&quot; style=&quot;width:1px;height:1px;&quot;&gt;&lt;script&gt; PARSELY = { autotrack: false, onload: function() { PARSELY.beacon.trackPageView({ url: &quot;https://country-survey-collabs.info/issues/46-19/love-and-cynicism/&quot;, urlref: window.location.href }); } } &lt;/script&gt; &lt;script id=&quot;parsely-cfg&quot; src=&quot;//cdn.parsely.com/keys/hcn.org/p.js&quot;&gt;&lt;/script&gt;</p> Copy to Clipboard

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