John M. Glionna

The high-pitched call of horses breaks the cool morning air as Chuck Browning stands near the corrals outside Banning, California, working the lasso he hopes will separate him from the scores of other rodeo cowboys milling about the show grounds. The others nervously fire their ropes at anything that doesn’t move —...

The four men stood at the mouth of the downtown drainage tunnel in Nogales, on the wrong side of the U.S.-Mexico border. It was just before dawn on January 30, 2015, and a recent storm had unleashed a torrent of choking flood water that roared in the darkness. On these...

Doug Stanhope stands atop a tiny stage the size of a wooden coffin, ready to unleash his vitriolic humor upon an audience whose members have come like willing lambs to slaughter. He's a misfit, a carnival barker dressed in a pea-green thrift-store sports coat and sickish-yellow shirt, topped off by...