pieces that we have on anything from finance to pop-culture. and then we have a lot of real fun art and entertain a doubt that we also do. we really embodied the independent we are not associate with the university. chicago review press is actually the parent company to independent publishers group, which is a large distribution company that has a wide variety of publishers that we distribute here in north america, and chicago review press is kind of our publishing editorial armed. >> we've been talking with elizabeth malzahn of chicago review press.

>> charles barkley, how long have you been writing? >> i guess since the first grade, but i never started doing it as a living until i was in my early 30s. i just decided one day i couldn't stand working for anyone. so i just started writing. i was an instant success. i start for about 10 years, and then i have a serious, if you run a bad restaurant and you have deep enough profits, you will eventually make it because you will find all of your people in your neighborhood that like bad food. >> your first book was? >> killing the hidden water. i was hired by a think tank government contract to write about water use in the southwest, aquifers, turned it in probably fired. did it circulated as a kind of, it was one of those federal contracts. and the university of texas called me up. somehow it drifted into there. i did know anything about them.

it is still in print probably because no one buys. they have all of these copies stacked a. that was 30 years ago. that was my crossing of the jordan, into the promised land to be a writer. >> did you ever think that it would have the kind of reaction that it did? >> i did know. i wrote it for myself. that was an odd deal. i come back from mexico bankrupt, normal state of being, and when i left i turned down the opportunity to do a book on charles keating, the keating five, the savings-and-loan scandal. and i came back 14 months later and took the deal because i needed the money. but the only way i could stay sane during 3 million, there were 3 million documents and i had to learn how to count using my fingers and toes and all this, $2 billion scandal. but i wrote blood ordered as kind of therapy like i was a real guy during the day. dotting i.'s. and that night i ran this kind of private jazz bar and i wrote blood orchid.

i want to rewrite because we are the united states so that's how it came into being. then it fell dead from the press. literally. i want everyone doing this to weep with me. i had a brilliant editor at random house. and they fill out these forms into a book. you know, each phase, they forgot to send out review copies. >> they forgot? >> they discover that two or three months after it came out. and if you know the book business, forget it. the book never got reviewed. but thanks to the fact of the sick and twisted country, it somehow found its audience out there. against in alleys, and so it sort of hung around for years it was actually the beginning of a 10 year project and then a couple years later i happened to do something real. i wrote this book where i spent seven and a half years wandering in bad outlays, you know. i was going to write the history of the drug business. doing that at night to stay sane, i wrote volley to.

and in this summer, 10 years after it all began, i went to a lonely texas town where there is only two things you can do, write a book or becoming a call at. and they didn't have any good wine so i wrote volume three, the end. so now i'm a good guy. it's all behind me. >> how many books total? >> i don't know because i don't count the photo books. >> one to two counts of photo books? >> because i get into them because i love photography. i just love still photography. until i get into them because my friends are photographers, and one of the oddities of being a serious photographer is you can't be published unless there's a tax. no breed of isaac photo book ever read a word. so you wind up writing all these photo books -- my friends tell me so the pictures won't bang into each other. that's, the one that you have

"inferno," that's actually 45, 50000 words. >> what's it about? >> is about what nature really is. it's about the hottest desert in north america, the sonoran desert and the pentatonic desert. they are contagious. 12000 square miles of thinking is. sometimes the military comes in and choose things but that's about it. there's the place i know the best. >> do you live there? >> no, you can't let there. it's over 100 miles across, no water. no people, no roads, no nothing that i have walked across it many times. but i don't like nature writing so i wrote a book to try and destroy nature writing in one single blow. >> why don't you like nature writing? >> its candy is. i mean it's just too damn precious. i love what they call major. if are going to have nature, you have to have. the flowers do it so let's have

people do it. the other thing is nature writing you have to go out into nature to find meaning in life that that's an absolute lie. the reason you go out there if you open to rate yourself as kind of a barbaric. you gloucester to get rid of your ego, to get rid of yourself. not to have a damn treetop to. trees are too intelligent to talk to people. they're just kind enough to provide shade. so that's what the book is about. just think of it as a long drug experience. i did because i wrote it in a couple weeks. >> you wrote the "inferno" and a couple of weeks? >> at the end of the clinton administration, bill clinton decided he wanted to be a real guy. and so he started creating national monuments as an afterthought. they all do it towards the end, the democrats. so i was part of a group that got the government to create the sonoran desert national monument, which is 480,000 square acres, a big piece. in doing that, at the end i

figured i'd either have to kill somebody, which was not a good decision because then they put you in a cage, or write this rant. so i went and wrote that. kind of a detoxed. >> i'm trying to picture you with bruce babbitt and a bunch of government officials. >> we go back a long way. he doesn't like the image either. i have known him for a long tiger tees to be the governor. arizona used to be a small state, you know. >> you basically were lobbying the government. >> yes. the government created that monument because they cut a deal in california. so they had to give up some other land as part of the deal. this land is under the wing of where fighter planes come in to train at the barry goldwater range. and so they have to let go. they were terrified of getting developed. somebody put a house down there and just keep falling out of the

sky. it's a bad habit. so they wanted no one there. only solution. make it a national monument. until the rest of us showed up. >> when did you discover? >> i lived out there since i was 12. i knew the ground. it's the most beautiful of plan in the united states which means those funny cac as everybody knows the big arms, this has the biggest and in the united states. so we created the monument. i remember standing out there with secretary of interior bruce babbitt and he said if i give you this, will that be enough? i said if you want enough for me you have to walk 40 miles south to the mexican line and make it all national monument. then he walked away from a. i guess i wasn't persuasive. anyway, we got it done. we did one of the monument, the grand staircase in southern utah in which a friend of mine, who was a pulitzer prize-winning photographer. we had to sit there and mark the photos in a book we have done so

we could fedex overnight to babbitt said he could go in to see clinton in the morning and say here, here's what it looks like. that's how the monument got done. it's like making sausage. it's not pretty. >> you have a guess would be a chapter called strike a match. do you remember that? >> naked entitles. see when i sent it to them it was just one long sheet of paper basically. there were no breaks. >> would you read this page? >> sure. i have to put him eyeglass. >> that's all right. >> you didn't bring that braille edition. >> can you remember what you are trying to do here are what you were thinking? >> yeah, i was thinking this is the natural world is precious. this is visceral to me. early in the 20th century, there was no environment movement. there was a conservation of it. we will save places because it are good places to kill animals are cruel safe places because they are pretty.

i have nothing to do with that. i want to save everything. meaning i think, you know, the earth and thus are inseparable. if you think we can separate, we are all going to die. the earth goes on. that's why i've always been attracted to these anti-desert they get one to 3 inches of rain each year. i once walked a dog that was 33 miles long and nothing but creosote which is kind of a zen experience. it helps if you have had crisis in your life that you can comprehend these moments. but anyway, i will read this. just this once. >> please. >> she says nothing now. i want to eat the dirt and lick the rock. and leave the shade and feel the burning. i know i don't belong here, but this is the only place i belong. there are too many of us on the hot dirt, and that fact can't be altered. the sheer numbers now are the fact, and i live by lurching

here and there to escape the numbers. i remember when they called it a population bomb. the sketched out some kind of future that looked more like the fate of fruit flies than my kind. we were warned. we ignored the warnings. i certainly did. there were too many zeros in these competitions. i can't take in things with too many zeros. i thought something will turn up and fix everything. this was an act of faith, and i am made out of acts of faith. so i've come to this place because it eats the acts of faith, and then robs them and slowly takes them back into the ground. still, she is silent. bingo. [laughter] >> i ran into this photographer, michael berman, whose photographs are in the book. and i was attracted to him because i had written for arizona highways for years, you know, to keep the lights on. i have worked with every major landscape photographer in the

west basically. and this was the best desert photography i have ever seen. >> why? >> because it did have a focal point. it captured the light, declare. because it captured the sheerness and the serenity. it didn't try to make it look like virginia or someplace. it took it for what it is at least i. and that's when the love begins when you actually accept a place. look, i think every ecosystem for habitat, habitat in this country should be loved. i don't think it's just the grand canyon or yellowstone. that's the myth. it's all good. i do spend time in north dakota, doing some stories for national geographic. and it is beautiful. you park your car, you walk out in this immense grassland, the whole state is a bloated everyone left. there are only 600,000 people there. and you are just lost in this immensity. and it's very call me. consider north dakota one big chunk of prozac. you get out there so i like all. it just happened i was lucky.

my sister was asthmatic when i was a child. we live in chicago. the doctors told my. you're going to lose her. so the old man had retired, you know, civil servant. pau gasol up verizon to save his daughter. so i got there and found the place i belong, the desert. never heard of it. i thought everyplace was trees in illinois. so i scored. this must be proof of intelligent design. >> you say the second book -- >> the second one is coming out in the fall 2008. i spent seven years on it. it's got 114 photographs by the mexican photographer, that is called exodus and it is about the migration. it's about the migration in mexico. is about crossing the line illegally and it's about the dire of the mexican people in the united states. >> so it is people pictures. >> yeah, the third lawyer i am just starting.

this is one of my jazz lounges where i rest from the cruelty of the world. and that one will be about power, and then i will retire, sit on a rock and know everything. >> what kind of power? >> the border is fascinating because it's a place, the mexican border, where two civilizations, hispanic and, you know, north america, united states. and where indian cultures have always tried to dominate and always fail. it's never been controlled. the comanches couldn't control. the apaches couldn't control. the spaniards couldn't control. the mexicans can't control it. we can't control it. and that then, when you look at the border, is our last desperate effort of civilization. where we blew up the big bomb in the spring of 1945 because we are going to finally be able to control things. and as you probably know from

reading newspapers, didn't work out that way. it turns out other folks can make these things. so i'm going to start with that, oppenheimer is always fascinated me. the guy who actually met doctor frost or method level and did the deal. >> the -- >> mexico and the united states. if you take the border of new mexico with mexico and if you take the border of taxes from el paso down to big band, no one goes there. that's the first thing if you want to really look, look where no one goes and goes there. i will give you another advice to give a big book with every national park in and make sure you never enter one because it will have signs in people. if you go outside them, you will get the experience. >> process question. do you write and then have the photos taken or are the photos taken and did you write something? neither.

>> how is that? >> michael berman is a brilliant photographer. i said what i want you to do, here is what the book is about, like you know the line. you have one instrument and i have another instrument. you can express this melody anyway you want, but if you document what i'm writing, i will refuse to do the book. meaning if i go to normans and there's a shot of a cactus, the hell with the. i want it like rhapsody blue. we have two separate instruments. we agree on the melody and then we ripped. so that's how we do a. >> how about the immigration book? >> same thing. we are close friends he still lives there. and we talked for years about this. something was going on that was a normal. this wasn't seasonal labor. this is the biggest funk movement on earth. movement of the mexican people into our country. and without we should record it. what we are going to have here

is 30, 35 million people, either entered illegally or they are descendents and ellis island will be nothing. i thought we will create their ellis island that we will record the experience of going through literally an infernal out there, these deserts, to enter the promised land. and so we did it. northern california, north carolina, we're down in new orleans. we are all after katrina all laborers. everywhere. crossing the wire. dealing with human smugglers here we did it all, one package, exodus. the fall 2008, accept no substitute. >> the most interesting person you've met along the way? >> during that story? >> during that story. this will sound on. there was a pastor that lives in new orleans. jesus gonzález.

then he decided he should devote himself to god and not be a roughneck, move to normans. had a little honduran, you know, parrish, congregation. than katrina hit, 80% of the city is destroyed. and suddenly these mexicans start showing up, you know. now his congregation are refugees from hurricanes, if you've ever been in new orleans, around the louis armstrong airport are all of these hotels. they arrived as refugees from the hurricane illegally. they change the sheets. they washed the dishes. that's how they got in. now they own homes, you know. they are settle. and these mexicans showed up and they felt was tremendous empathy because they knew what it was like to be migrants, you know, fleeing something. so the reverend and his congregation to get all these mexicans, stuff them in their houses, you know, but cause all throughout the church, opened up

a clinic, medically, they all have the katrina cough from the mold. got lawyers and to protect their jobs. so i asked the pastor why are you doing this, because it's illegal, and he said i thought christianity thought you'd tell people. so that was the most impressive person to. >> charles bowden, thank you very much. >> thank you.