According to The New York Sun, "Owens is uniquely associated with suburbanites living in the tract housing developments that absorbed 60 million Americans in the decades following
World War II."[2]
In 1973, Owens released the book Suburbia, whose pictures showed American suburban life in Livermore.[5]The Los Angeles Times commented that the book "rouses pity, contempt, laughter, and self-recognition. Owens’s influence was immense during the 1970s, especially with respect to the kind of portraiture that shows the middle class." In 2001, Suburbia was included in Andrew Roth’s The Book of 101 Books: Seminal Photographic Books of the Twentieth Century.
Owens went on to become a well-known beer brewer and publisher of American Brewer magazine.[3][6] He founded
Buffalo Bill's Brewery in Hayward in 1983, one of the first brewpubs to open in California since prohibition.[3] In 2003, he founded the American Distilling Institute, a professional membership organization, and publishing house "to promote and defend the art and enterprise of craft distilling."[7] As the president of ADI, Owens has become one of the leading spokesmen of the craft distilling movement.[8]
Bill Owens. Anthology. Bologna: Damiani, 2008. By Claudia Zanfi, with an introduction by
A. M. Homes and photographs and afterword by Owens.
ISBN9788862080170.
Craft of Whiskey Distilling. Hayward, California: American Distilling Institute, 2008.
OCLC1043326099.
Craft of Whiskey Distilling. Revised edition. Hayward, California: American Distilling Institute, 2013.
ISBN9780982405512
The Village: Bill Owens – Jamaica Peace Corps Photographs 1964–66. True North, 2014. Edited by Geir Jordahl, Kate Jordahl, and John Thacker. With an introduction by Victoria Sheridan and an afterword by Geir Jordahl.
ISBN978-0-9899915-1-3.
The Nano Distillery: The Future of Distilling. Hayward, California: White Mule, 2018.
ISBN9781732235403.
Cars: A Completely American Reality. Bellingham, Washington: True North, 2012.
ISBN9781943013234.
Altamont to America: Bill Owens and the Legacy of Suburbia: Photographs 1964–2020. Bellingham, Washington: True North, 2018.
ISBN9781943013166