Charles Bowden

Ciudad Juarez lies just across the Rio Grande from El Paso, Texas. A once-thriving border town, it now resembles a failed state. Infamously known as the place where women disappear, its murder rate exceeds that of Baghdad. Last year 1,607 people were killed, a number that is on pace to increase in 2009. In Murder City, Charles Bowden, one of the few journalists who has spent extended periods of time in Juarez, has written an extraordinary account...

"Don't let the title fool you. It's about more than street signs: it's about life in the big city; it's about history and the loss of history; it's about neighborhoods that were and never were, but still could be; it's about illusion and the real thing...." Studs Terkel.

Chronicles the rapid decline of the city of Cuidad Juárez, Mexico, beginning in 2008 when more than twenty police officers were murdered, describing how drugs, globalization, corruption, and immigration have lead to increased violence and murder and created a dangerous city where crime runs rampant.

"In this unprecedented and chilling monologue, a repentant Mexican hitman tells the unvarnished truth about the war on drugs on the American. El Sicario is the hidden face of America's war on drugs. He is a contract killer who functioned as a commandante in the Chihuahuan State police, who was trained in the US by the FBI, and who for twenty years kidnapped, tortured and murdered people for the drug industry at the behest of Mexican drug cartels....