Most Popular Books by Hunter S. Thompson

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • A mind-bending view of the 1992 presidential campaign—in all of its horror, sacrifice, lust, and dubious glory—from the famed political analyst and author of Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail and Hell’s Angels “Memorable . . . [Thompson] delivers yet another of his trademark cocktail mixes of unbelievable tales and dark observations about the sausage grind that is the U.S. presidential sweepstakes.”—Los Angeles Daily News In Better Than Sex, Hunter S. Thompson wanders into the savage vortex of political power to present a groundbreaking and bizarre saga of what happens to campaign junkies behind the scenes of a victorious presidential campaign. Better Than Sex drags you into Bill Clinton’s America, a world full of fear that stretches from Pennsylvania Avenue to Hollywood to the squalid hills of the Ozarks, where power-crazed monsters like James Carville and George Stephanopoulos seize control of a nation and wallow unashamed in a Palace of Power where the only governing ethic is raw lust. It is an ugly and disillusioning spectacle, one that only the merciful death of Richard M. Nixon—explored here in all its glorious symbolism—could defuse. Complete with faxes sent to and received by candidate Clinton’s top aides, and 100 percent pure gonzo screeds on Richard Nixon, George Bush, and Oliver North, here is the most true-blue campaign tell-all ever penned by man or beast.

From the bestselling author of The Rum Diary and king of “Gonzo” journalism Hunter S. Thompson, comes the definitive collection of the journalist’s finest work from Rolling Stone. Fear and Loathing at Rolling Stone showcases the roller-coaster of a career at the magazine that was his literary home. “Buy the ticket, take the ride,” was a favorite slogan of Hunter S. Thompson, and it pretty much defined both his work and his life. Jann S. Wenner, the outlaw journalist’s friend and editor for nearly thirty-five years, has assembled articles—and a wealth of never- before-seen correspondence and internal memos from Hunter’s storied tenure at Rolling Stone—that begin with Thompson’s infamous run for sheriff of Aspen on the Freak Party ticket in 1970 and end with his final piece on the Bush-Kerry showdown of 2004. In between is Thompson’s remarkable coverage of the 1972 presidential campaign and plenty of attention paid to Richard Nixon; encounters with Muhammad Ali, Bill Clinton, and the Super Bowl; and a lengthy excerpt from his acknowledged masterpiece, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. The definitive volume of Hunter S. Thompson’s work published in the magazine, Fear and Loathing at Rolling Stone traces the evolution of a personal and professional relationship that helped redefine modern American journalism, presenting Thompson through a new prism as he pursued his lifelong obsession: The life and death of the American Dream.

Hunter S. Thompson was so outside the box, a new word was invented just to define him: Gonzo. He was a journalist who mocked all the rules, a hell-bent fellow who loved to stomp on his own accelerator, the writer every other writer tried to imitate. In these brutally candid and very funny interviews that range across his fabled career, Thompson reveals himself as mad for politics, which he thought was both the source of the country’s despair and, just maybe, the answer to it. At a moment when politics is once again roiling America, we need Thompson’s guts and wild wisdom more than ever.

A compilation of articles in which journalist Hunter S. Thompson reflects on politics, sex, and sports in the modern world.

A collection of outrageous and brilliant interviews with the author of "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas," selected and edited by his widow, Anita Thompson.

In 1971, the outlandish originator of gonzo journalism, Hunter S. Thompson (1937-2005) commandeered the international literary limelight with his best-selling, comic masterpiece Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. Following his 1966 debut Hell''s Angels, Thompson displayed an uncanny flair for inserting himself into the epicenter of major sociopolitical events of our generation. His audacious, satirical, ranting screeds on American culture have been widely read and admired. Whether in books, essays, or collections of his correspondence, his raging and incisive voice and writing style are unmistakable. Conversations with Hunter S. Thompson is the first compilation of selected personal interviews that traces the trajectory of his prolific and much-publicized career. These engaging exchanges reveal Thompson''s determination, self-indulgence, energy, outrageous wit, ire, and passions as he discusses his life and work. Beef Torrey is the editor of Conversations with Thomas McGuane and co-editor of the forthcoming Jim Harrison: A Comprehensive Bibliography. Kevin Simonson has been published in SPIN, Rolling Stone, Village Voice, and Hustler.

The 50th-anniversary edition of the classic, savagely comic account of a trip to Las Vegas that came to represent what happened to America in the 1960s—and a founding document of “gonzo journalism”—featuring the original artwork by Ralph Steadman and a new introduction by Caity Weaver First published in Rolling Stone magazine in 1971, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas is told through Hunter S. Thompson’s story of an assignment he undertook with his attorney to visit Las Vegas and “check it out.” The book stands as the final word on the highs and lows of that decade, one of the defining works of our time, and a stylistic and journalistic tour de force. As Christopher Lehmann-Haupt wrote in The New York Times, it has “a kind of mad, corrosive prose poetry that picks up where Norman Mailer’s An American Dream left off and explores what Tom Wolfe left out.” This 50th-anniversary Modern Library edition features Ralph Steadman’s original drawings, a new introduction by New York Times writer Caity Weaver, and three companion pieces selected by Thompson: “Jacket Copy for Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas,” “Strange Rumblings in Aztlan,” and “The Kentucky Derby Is Decadent and Depraved.”

Gonzo journalist and literary roustabout Hunter S. Thompson flies with the angels—Hell’s Angels, that is—in this short work of nonfiction. “California, Labor Day weekend . . . early, with ocean fog still in the streets, outlaw motorcyclists wearing chains, shades and greasy Levis roll out from damp garages, all-night diners and cast-off one-night pads in Frisco, Hollywood, Berdoo and East Oakland, heading for the Monterey peninsula, north of Big Sur. . . The Menace is loose again.” Thus begins Hunter S. Thompson’s vivid account of his experiences with California’s most notorious motorcycle gang, the Hell’s Angels. In the mid-1960s, Thompson spent almost two years living with the controversial Angels, cycling up and down the coast, reveling in the anarchic spirit of their clan, and, as befits their name, raising hell. His book successfully captures a singular moment in American history, when the biker lifestyle was first defined, and when such countercultural movements were electrifying and horrifying America. Thompson, the creator of Gonzo journalism, writes with his usual bravado, energy, and brutal honesty, and with a nuanced and incisive eye; as The New Yorker pointed out, “For all its uninhibited and sardonic humor, Thompson’s book is a thoughtful piece of work.” As illuminating now as when originally published in 1967, Hell’s Angels is a gripping portrait, and the best account we have of the truth behind an American legend.

The first volume in Hunter S. Thompson’s bestselling Gonzo Papers offers brilliant commentary and outrageous humor, featuring a new introduction from award-winning author and editor John Jeremiah Sullivan. Originally published in 1979, the first volume of the bestselling “Gonzo Papers” is now back in print. The Great Shark Hunt is Dr. Hunter S. Thompson’s largest and, arguably, most important work, covering Nixon to napalm, Las Vegas to Watergate, Carter to cocaine. These essays offer brilliant commentary and outrageous humor, in signature Thompson style. Ranging in date from the National Observer days to the era of Rolling Stone, The Great Shark Hunt offers myriad, highly charged entries, including the first Hunter S. Thompson piece to be dubbed “gonzo”—“The Kentucky Derby Is Decadent and Depraved,” which appeared in Scanlan''s Monthly in 1970. From this essay, a new journalistic movement sprang which would change the shape of American letters. Thompson''s razor-sharp insight and crystal clarity capture the crazy, hypocritical, degenerate, and redeeming aspects of the explosive and colorful ‘60s and ‘70s.

The Gonzo memoir from one of the most influential voices in American literature, Kingdom of Fear traces the course of Hunter S. Thompson’s life as a rebel—from a smart-mouthed Kentucky kid flaunting all authority to a convention-defying journalist who came to personify a wild fusion of fact, fiction, and mind-altering substances. Brilliant, provocative, outrageous, and brazen, Hunter S. Thompson''s infamous rule breaking—in his journalism, in his life, and under the law—changed the shape of American letters, and the face of American icons. Call it the evolution of an outlaw. Here are the formative experiences that comprise Thompson’s legendary trajectory alongside the weird and the ugly. Whether detailing his exploits as a foreign correspondent in Rio, his job as night manager of the notorious O’Farrell Theatre in San Francisco, his epic run for sheriff of Aspen on the Freak Power ticket, or the sensational legal maneuvering that led to his full acquittal in the famous 99 Days trial, Thompson is at the peak of his narrative powers in Kingdom of Fear. And this boisterous, blistering ride illuminates as never before the professional and ideological risk taking of a literary genius and transgressive icon.

Here, for the first time, is the private and most intimate correspondence of one of America''s most influential and incisive journalists--Hunter S. Thompson. In letters to a Who''s Who of luminaries from Norman Mailer to Charles Kuralt, Tom Wolfe to Lyndon Johnson, William Styron to Joan Baez--not to mention his mother, the NRA, and a chain of newspaper editors--Thompson vividly catches the tenor of the times in 1960s America and channels it all through his own razor-sharp perspective. Passionate in their admiration, merciless in their scorn, and never anything less than fascinating, the dispatches of The Proud Highway offer an unprecedented and penetrating gaze into the evolution of the most outrageous raconteur/provocateur ever to assault a typewriter.

Capturing the essence of Hunter S. Thompson’s “Gonzo” style, short story Mescalito details his dark and miserably comic first mescaline drug trip. First published in Songs of the Doomed, Mescalito suggests the nascent ideas and energy of Thompson’s seminal work on the ‘60s experience, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. "We live in a jungle of pending disasters," the author warns. Alone in a hotel room in Los Angeles in February, 1969, Thompsons’ alter-ego Duke sustains a fever-pitched bout of paranoia so dark and depraved, it would make most mortals run fast―and far―from this kind of suicidal experimentation.

From the bestselling author of Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, the legendary Hunter S. Thompson’s second volume of the “Gonzo Papers” is back. Generation of Swine collects hundreds of columns from the infamous journalist’s 1980s tenure at the San Francisco Examiner. Here, against a backdrop of late-night tattoo sessions and soldier-of-fortune trade shows, Dr. Thompson is at his apocalyptic best―covering emblematic events such as the 1987-88 presidential campaign, with Vice President George Bush, Sr., fighting for his life against Republican competitors like Alexander Haig, Pat Buchanan, and Pat Robertson; detailing the GOP''s obsession with drugs and drug abuse; while at the same time capturing momentous social phenomena as they occurred, like the rise of cable, satellite TV, and CNN―24 hours of mainline news. Showcasing his inimitable talent for social and political analysis, Generation of Swine is vintage Thompson―eerily prescient, incisive, and enduring.

First published in 1990, Songs of the Doomed is back in print -- by popular demand! In this third and most extraordinary volume of the Gonzo Papers, Dr. Hunter S. Thompson recalls high and hideous moments in his thirty years in the Passing Lane -- and no one is safe from his hilarious, remarkably astute social commentary. With Thompson''s trademark insight and passion about the state of American politics and culture, Songs of the Doomed charts the long, strange trip from Kennedy to Quayle in Thompson''s freewheeling, inimitable style. Spanning four decades -- 1950 to 1990 -- Thompson is at the top of his form while fleeing New York for Puerto Rico, riding with the Hell''s Angels, investigating Las Vegas sleaze, grappling with the "Dukakis problem," and finally, detailing his infamous lifestyle bust, trial documents, and Fourth Amendment battle with the Law. These tales -- often sleazy, brutal, and crude -- are only the tip of what Jack Nicholson called "the most baffling human iceberg of our time." Songs of the Doomed is vintage Thompson -- a brilliant, brazen, bawdy compilation of the greatest sound bites of Gonzo journalism from the past thirty years.

An almost unnaturally poignant love story from the father of “Gonzo” journalism and Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas Hunter S. Thompson. What makes the romantic short story Screwjack so touching, for all its queerness, is the aching melancholy in its depiction of the modern man''s burden: that "we are doomed. Mama has gone off to Real Estate School...and after that maybe even to Law School. We will never see her again." Hunter S. Thompson’s most searing and unnaturally poignant love story, Screwjack is simultaneously eerie and feverish, debauched and affecting. Never before—and perhaps never since—has modern man’s melancholia been so vividly revealed in one powerful story.

"Spanning the years between 1968 and 1976, these never-before-published letters show Thompson building his legend."--Jacket.

The irreverent writer''s long lost novel, written before his nonfiction became popular, chronicles a journalist''s enthusiastic, drunken foray through 1950s San Juan.