Blood Orchid: An Unnatural History of America [Paperback]

Charles Bowden (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: February 27, 2002

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.

Editorial Reviews

From Booklist

Bowden is an incandescent writer attuned to beauty as well as crime and violence. He's written about drug dealers, Charles Keating, and his beloved Sonora Desert in books notable for their jolting lyricism. Here he takes us on a wild journey through his past and across the gritty American and Mexican West, ranting all the way about our poisoned earth and corrupted society. Bowden's "blood orchids" are evil, malignant blossoms that feed on nuclear waste and the horrors of war, massacre, torture, and prejudice. We have a compulsion for "killing the thing we love," Bowden claims, an urge responsible, in part, for the severe damage we've done to the environment. Bowden rails against this travesty as well as the even greater crimes perpetuated against Native Americans, but he also declares his love for the "mess" of life in the Americas, the "strange mongrel mixture of races, ideas, seeds, spores, viruses, bacteria." He despises the sanctimoniousness of the environmental movement and doesn't hesitate to declare his politically incorrect taste for alcohol, women in high heels, guns, and traveling at high speeds. As his narrative progresses, Bowden's stream of consciousness becomes a raging river, and riding it proves to be exhilarating and painful, provoking and cathartic. Donna Seaman --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Review

"Blood Orchid is its own trip, brilliant [and] always compelling. Bowden says what he means, hang the consequences. He is becoming one of our most important voices in the so-called New West." -William Kittredge, Los Angeles Times

"Bowden's anger is delicious [He] believes that the environmental crisis is not fundamentally physical but rather is caused by the fact that `we have lost the fire and belief and courage to act.' His book is ironic proof that the embers of that fire still glow." --Outside

"A first-rate eye-opener to 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

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 320 pages
• Publisher: North Point Press; 1st edition (February 27, 2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0865476292
• ISBN-13: 978-0865476295
• Product Dimensions: 7.6 x 5.7 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 13 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 3.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (17 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #543,774 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

15 of 16 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A critical look into the real history of America., April 19, 1999

By 

SLS "searchlightsoul" (Pelham NH USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Blood Orchid:: An Unnatural History of America (Hardcover)

A must read for every American. Imagine that the problems we see every day are not individual issues, but are symptoms of a more global sickness. Bowden challenges the reader to face the truth about our culture, America as we know it is dead, as he says, pick up a newspaper, our obiturary is on every page. Written from the optimistic perspective that a problem identified can be a problem solved, Bowden delivers a powerful contribution to our modern times. A must read.

9 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars "Blood orchids. Everywhere.", March 10, 2002

By 

G. Merritt (Boulder, CO) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Blood Orchid: An Unnatural History of America (Paperback)

In the introduction to his 298-page book, Charles Bowden tells us, "I wrote this book because I had a simple, straightforward idea--we've been in a long war and we've lost that war and the war has poisoned us and our ground. If we admit these facts, we might survive. If we don't, it really won't matter if we survive because we will be functionally dead. Pick up any newspaper, our obituary is everywhere on the pages" (p. xiv). Bowden's prose is powerful, prophetic, hallucinogenic, and poetic. Although Bowden is not always easy to follow, he is worth the effort. In BLOOD ORCHIDS, he looks deeply into "the history of America" to discover "our governments are sick and that we are mentally ill and spiritually dead and that all our issues and crises are symptoms of this deeper sickness" (p. 139). After you've experienced this book, read Bowden's more recent BLUES FOR CANNIBALS.

G. Merritt

6 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Blood orchid, November 21, 2002

By 

Jared Hight (Boise, ID) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Blood Orchid: An Unnatural History of America (Paperback)

As the Hammer Orchid seduces its prey with false promises of satisfaction, Charles Bowden draws his readers into his own personal saga of pain with an impressive display of anger and wrath. Multitudes of partially coherent and mostly unrelated images of sex and war are thrown to the reader at a steadily unrelenting pace, leaving one with the choice of either leaving them at the table, or ingesting them wholly and accepting the emotional heartburn that will accompany the feast. For those who choose the path of greater resistance, the rewards will follow. A highly recommended but particularly difficult read, intended for those with a passionate devotion to nature, man, history and their shared bonds.