A comprehensive guide to CompuServe includes instructions on using menus, getting instant news online, using electronic mail services, exploring the I-Quest gateway to worldwide databases, and many other topics.
Charles Bowen has been writing professionally since 1967 and has published two dozen books of nonfiction, mostly about computers and communications. His first novels have been inspired by cruises he and his wife, Pamela, have taken on the steamboat of dreams, The Delta Queen.
Bowen's professional roots are in journalism, a career that started in the late 1960s as a news correspondent for The Associated Press. He continued his newspaper career for 17 years as a reporter, a columnist and then a city editor, before beginning his full-time freelance career in 1985.
Bowen's experience in cyberspace actually pre-dates the launch of the World Wide Web by more than a decade. He has written some two dozen books about computer communications and technology, working with major publishing houses, including Random House, Bantam Books, IDG Books Worldwide and Times Books. His first book was How To Get The Most Out of CompuServe, a best-seller published by Bantam Books. That book went into five editions and had a publication life of nearly 10 years, highly unusual for a computer book. He also wrote CompuServe from A to Z (Random House), The Hitchhiker's Guide To America Online (MIS Press), Teach Yourself America Online (IDG) and Modem Nation (Times Books).
Also for more than six years, he hosted a syndicated daily radio show called "Internet News," carried on some 200 stations in the U.S. and 600 aboard via Voice of America. During that time, he broadcast reviews more than 1,200 Web sites and was on hand to report the start of some of the major Internet resources in use today.
Besides books, Bowen has been an active columnist both in computer publications and in the general press. He was a long-time contributing editor and columnist for Home PC magazine and the America West in-flight magazine and wrote a weekly Internet-oriented column for Editor & Publisher, a magazine serving the newspaper industry.
A native of Kanawha County, West Virginia, Bowen and his wife, Pamela, have lived in Huntington since 1971. He is a 1970 graduate of the University of Kentucky.
