hunter s thompson essay collection

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20 great articles and essays by hunter s. thompson, misadventure, the kentucky derby is decadent and depraved, doomed love at the taco stand, on politics, freak power in the rockies, he was a crook, the motorcycle gangs, strange rumblings in aztlan, prisoner of denver, see also..., 150 great articles and essays.

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Read 9 Free Articles by Hunter S. Thompson That Span His Gonzo Journalist Career (1965–2005)

in Literature , Writing | December 27th, 2013 4 Comments

Image  via Wiki­me­dia Com­mons

Most read­ers know Hunter S. Thomp­son for his 1971 book Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas: A Sav­age Jour­ney to the Heart of the Amer­i­can Dream . But in over 45 years of writ­ing, this pro­lif­ic observ­er of the Amer­i­can scene wrote volu­mi­nous­ly, often hilar­i­ous­ly, and usu­al­ly with decep­tive­ly clear-eyed vit­ri­ol on sports, pol­i­tics, media, and oth­er vicious­ly addic­tive pur­suits. (“I hate to advo­cate drugs, alco­hol, vio­lence, or insan­i­ty to any­one,” he famous­ly said, “but they’ve always worked for me.”) His dis­tinc­tive style, often imi­tat­ed but nev­er repli­cat­ed, all but forced the coin­ing of the term “gonzo” jour­nal­ism. But what could define it? One clue comes in  Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas itself, when Thomp­son reflects on his expe­ri­ence in the city, osten­si­bly as a reporter: “What  was  the sto­ry? Nobody had both­ered to say. So we would have to drum it up on our own. Free Enter­prise. The Amer­i­can Dream. Hor­a­tio Alger gone mad on drugs in Las Vegas. Do it  now : pure Gonzo jour­nal­ism.”

You’ll find out more in the  Paris Review ’s inter­view with Thomp­son , in which he recounts once feel­ing that “jour­nal­ism was just a tick­et to ride out, that I was basi­cal­ly meant for high­er things. Nov­els.” Sit­ting down to begin his prop­er lit­er­ary career, Thomp­son took a quick job writ­ing up the Hel­l’s Angels , which let him get over “the idea that jour­nal­ism was a low­er call­ing. Jour­nal­ism is fun because it offers imme­di­ate work. You get hired and at least you can cov­er the f&cking City Hall. It’s excit­ing.” And then came the real epiphany, after he went to cov­er the Ken­tucky Der­by for  Scan­lan ’s: “Most depress­ing days of my life. I’d lie in my tub at the Roy­al­ton. I thought I had failed com­plete­ly as a jour­nal­ist. Final­ly, in des­per­a­tion and embar­rass­ment, I began to rip the pages out of my note­book and give them to a copy­boy to take to a fax machine down the street. When I left I was a bro­ken man, failed total­ly, and con­vinced I’d be exposed when the stuff came out.”

Indeed, the expo­sure came, but not in the way he expect­ed. Below, we’ve col­lect­ed ten of Thomp­son’s arti­cles freely avail­able online, from those ear­ly pieces on the Hel­l’s Angels and the Ken­tucky Der­by to oth­ers on the 1972 Pres­i­den­tial race, the Hon­olu­lu Marathon, Richard Nixon, and wee-hour con­ver­sa­tions with Bill Mur­ray. But don’t take these sub­jects too lit­er­al­ly; Thomp­son always had a way of find­ing some­thing even more inter­est­ing in exact­ly the oppo­site direc­tion from what­ev­er he’d ini­tial­ly meant to write about. And that, per­haps, reveals more about the gonzo method than any­thing else.

“ The Motor­cy­cle Gangs: Losers and Out­siders ” ( The Nation , 1965) The arti­cle that would become the basis for Thomp­son’s first book,  Hel­l’s Angels: The Strange and Ter­ri­ble Saga of the Out­law Motor­cy­cle Gangs . “When you get in an argu­ment with a group of out­law motor­cy­clists, you can gen­er­al­ly count your chances of emerg­ing unmaimed by the num­ber of heavy-hand­ed allies you can muster in the time it takes to smash a beer bot­tle. In this league, sports­man­ship is for old lib­er­als and young fools.”

Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas (Rolling Stone, 1971) The Gonzo jour­nal­ism clas­sic first appeared as a two-part series in  Rolling Stone  mag­a­zine in Novem­ber 1971, com­plete with  illus­tra­tions from Ralph Stead­man , before being pub­lished as a book in 1972.   Rolling Stone  has  post­ed the orig­i­nal ver­sion on its web site .

“ Fear and Loathing on the Cam­paign Trail in ’72 ″ ( Rolling Stone , 1973) Excerpts from Thomp­son’s book of near­ly the same name, an exam­i­na­tion of Demo­c­ra­t­ic Par­ty can­di­date George McGov­ern’s unsuc­cess­ful bid for the Pres­i­den­cy that McGov­ern’s cam­paign man­ag­er Frank Mankiewicz called “the least fac­tu­al, most accu­rate account” in print. “My own the­o­ry, which sounds like mad­ness, is that McGov­ern would have been bet­ter off run­ning against Nixon with the same kind of neo-‘radical’ cam­paign he ran in the pri­maries. Not rad­i­cal in the left/right sense, but rad­i­cal in a sense that he was com­ing on with a new… a dif­fer­ent type of politi­cian… a per­son who actu­al­ly would grab the sys­tem by the ears and shake it.”

“ The Curse of Lono ” ( Play­boy , 1983) Thomp­son and Stead­man’s assign­ment from  Run­ning  mag­a­zine to cov­er the Hon­ololu marathon turns into a char­ac­ter­is­ti­cal­ly “ter­ri­ble mis­ad­ven­ture,” this one even involv­ing the old Hawai­ian gods. “It was not easy for me, either, to accept the fact that I was born 1700 years ago in an ocean-going canoe some­where off the Kona Coast of Hawaii, a prince of roy­al Poly­ne­sian blood, and lived my first life as King Lono, ruler of all the islands, god of excess, unde­feat­ed box­er. How’s that for roots?”

“ He Was a Crook ” ( Rolling Stone , 1994) Thomp­son’s obit­u­ary of, and per­son­al his­to­ry of his hatred for, Pres­i­dent Richard M. Nixon. “Some peo­ple will say that words like  scum  and  rot­ten  are wrong for Objec­tive Jour­nal­ism — which is true, but they miss the point. It was the built-in blind spots of the Objec­tive rules and dog­ma that allowed Nixon to slith­er into the White House in the first place.

“ Doomed Love at the Taco Stand ” ( Time , 2001) Thomp­son’s adven­tures in Cal­i­for­nia, to which he has returned for the pro­duc­tion of Ter­ry Gilliam’s film adap­ta­tion of  Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas  star­ring John­ny Depp. “I had to set­tle for half of Dep­p’s trail­er, along with his C4 Porsche and his wig, so I could look more like myself when I drove around Bev­er­ly Hills and stared at peo­ple when we rolled to a halt at stop­lights on Rodeo Dri­ve.”

“ Fear & Loathing in Amer­i­ca ” (ESPN.com, 2001) In the imme­di­ate after­math of 9/11, Thomp­son looks out onto the grim and para­noid future he sees ahead. “This is going to be a very expen­sive war, and Vic­to­ry is not guar­an­teed — for any­one, and cer­tain­ly not for any­one as baf­fled as George W. Bush.”

“Pris­on­er of Den­ver” (Van­i­ty Fair, 2004) A chron­i­cle of Thomp­son’s (posthu­mous­ly suc­cess­ful) involve­ment in the case of Lisl Auman, a young woman he believed wrong­ful­ly impris­oned for the mur­der of a police offi­cer. “ ‘We’ is the most pow­er­ful word in pol­i­tics. Today it’s Lisl Auman, but tomor­row it could be you, me, us.”

“ Shot­gun Golf with Bill Mur­ray ” (ESPN.com, 2005) Thomp­son’s final piece of writ­ing, in which he runs an idea for a new sport —com­bin­ing golf, Japan­ese mul­ti­sto­ry dri­ving ranges, and the dis­charg­ing of shot­guns — by the com­e­dy leg­end at 3:30 in the morn­ing. “It was Bill Mur­ray who taught me how to mor­ti­fy your oppo­nents in any sport­ing con­test, hon­est or oth­er­wise. He taught me my humil­i­at­ing PGA fade­away shot, which has earned me a lot of mon­ey… after that, I taught him how to swim, and then I intro­duced him to the shoot­ing arts, and now he wins every­thing he touch­es.”

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Hunter S. Thompson’s Har­row­ing, Chem­i­cal-Filled Dai­ly Rou­tine

Hunter S. Thomp­son Calls Tech Sup­port, Unleash­es a Tirade Full of Fear and Loathing (NSFW)

John­ny Depp Reads Let­ters from Hunter S. Thomp­son (NSFW)

Hunter S. Thomp­son Remem­bers Jim­my Carter’s Cap­ti­vat­ing Bob Dylan Speech (1974)

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces  Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture  and writes essays on cities, Asia, film, lit­er­a­ture, and aes­thet­ics. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les,  A Los Ange­les Primer . Fol­low him on Twit­ter at  @colinmarshall  or on his  brand new Face­book page .

by Colin Marshall | Permalink | Comments (4) |

Related posts:

Comments (4), 4 comments so far.

I am look­ing for free inter­petur ebooks ASL sign lan­guage I am a begin­ner do you have any that I can use actu­al­ly Books that I can have pub­lish­er’s name is Mick­ey Flodin

Most of these links are bust­ed — might be time for an update?

want to send you mon­ey but your web­site makes this dif­fi­cult.

thomp­son is good writer

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13 Great Articles and Essays by Hunter S. Thompson

Posted by John | Aug 18, 2020 | Essays | 0 |

Hunter Stockton Thompson (July 18, 1937 – February 20, 2005) was an American journalist and author, and the founder of the gonzo journalism movement. He first rose to prominence with the publication of Hell’s Angels (1967), a book for which he spent a year living and riding with the Hells Angels motorcycle gang to write a first-hand account of the lives and experiences of its members.

In 1970, he wrote an unconventional magazine feature titled “The Kentucky Derby Is Decadent and Depraved” for Scanlan’s Monthly, which both raised his profile and established him as a writer with counterculture credibility. It also set him on a path to establishing his own subgenre of New Journalism that he called “Gonzo”, which was essentially an ongoing experiment in which the writer becomes a central figure and even a participant in the events of the narrative.

Thompson remains best known for Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas (1971), a book first serialized in Rolling Stone in which he grapples with the implications of what he considered the failure of the 1960s counterculture movement. It was adapted on film twice: loosely in Where the Buffalo Roam starring Bill Murray as Thompson in 1980, and directly in 1998 by director Terry Gilliam in a film starring Johnny Depp and Benicio del Toro. The Doonesbury cartoon character Duke – who was modeled after Thompson – pens an essay about “my shoplifting conviction” titled “Fear and Loathing at Macy’s Menswear”, a reference to Thompson’s book.

The Kentucky Derby Is Decadent and Depraved

Hunter s. thompson.

The telephone rang at Warren Hinckle’s San Francisco home at about 3:30 in the morning on Wednesday, April 29, 1970. When Hinckle picked up the receiver, he heard the unmistakable voice of Hunter S. Thompson, calling from Aspen, proclaiming, “Goddammit, Scanlan’s has to cover the Derby. It’s important.”

The pitch, even at the late hour and the late date (barely 72 hours before the race itself), was fairly irresistible. Send Thompson, still finding his distinctive voice in countercultural journalism, to his hometown of Louisville to cover the drunken, debauched scene at Churchill Downs for Scanlan‘s, the anti-establishment (some would say subversive) monthly magazine for which Hinckle was co-editor.

Doomed Love at the Taco Stand

Going to Hollywood is a dangerous high-pressure gig for most people, under any circumstances. It is like pumping hot steam into thousands of different-size boilers. The laws of physics mandate that some will explode before others–although all of them will explode sooner or later unless somebody cuts off the steam.

I love steam myself, and I have learned to survive under savage and unnatural pressures. I am a steam freak. Hollywood is chicken feed to me. I can take it or leave it. I have been here before, many times. On some days it seems like I have lived at the Chateau Marmont for half my life. There is blood on these walls, and some of it is mine. Last night I sliced off the tips of two fingers and bled so profusely in the elevator that they had to take it out of service.

Freak Power in the Rockies

A Memoir and Rambling Discussion (with Rude Slogans) of Freak Power in the Rockies… on the Weird Mechanics of Running a Takeover Bid on a Small Town… and a Vulgar Argument for Seizing Political Power and Using It like a Gun Ripped Away from a Cop… with Jangled Comments on the Uncertain Role of the Head and the Awful Stupor Factor… and Other Disorganized Notes on ‘How to Punish the Fatbacks,’ How to Make Sure that Today’s Pig Is Tomorrow’s Offal… and Why This Crazed New World Can Only Be Dealt with by… A New Posse!

‘Just how weird can you stand it, brother — before your love will crack?’ — Mike Lydon in Ramparts, March, 1970 Two hours before the polls closed we realized that we had no headquarters — no hole or Great Hall where the faithful could gather for the awful election-night deathwatch. Or to celebrate the Great Victory that suddenly seemed very possible.

He Was a Crook

Richard Nixon is gone now, and I am poorer for it. He was the real thing – a political monster straight out of Grendel and a very dangerous enemy. He could shake your hand and stab you in the back at the same time. He lied to his friends and betrayed the trust of his family.

Not even Gerald Ford, the unhappy ex-president who pardoned Nixon and kept him out of prison, was immune to the evil fallout. Ford, who believes strongly in Heaven and Hell, has told more than one of his celebrity golf partners that ‘I know I will go to hell, because I pardoned Richard Nixon.’

The Motorcycle Gangs

Last Labor Day weekend newspapers all over California gave front-page reports of a heinous gang rape in the moonlit sand dunes near the town of Seaside on the Monterey Peninsula. Two girls, aged 14 and 15, were allegedly taken from their dates by a gang of filthy, frenzied, boozed-up motorcycle hoodlums called “Hell’s Angels,” and dragged off to be “repeatedly assaulted.”

A deputy sheriff, summoned by one of the erstwhile dates, said he “arrived at the beach and saw a huge bonfire surrounded by cyclists of both sexes. Then the two sobbing, near-hysterical girls staggered out of the darkness, begging for help. One was completely nude and the other had on only a torn sweater.”

Strange Rumblings in Aztlan

‘Strange Rumblings in Aztlan’ is a long article about many things. HST touches every front he possibly can while reporting the death of Ruben Salazar, a nationally known Mexican American reporter for the LA Times. ‘Aztlan’, in style, is similar to HST’s South American reporting, however it teeters at gonzo in some parts.

The story was important enough to be included in The Rolling Stone Reader (1974) and the Modern Library version of Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas and Other American Stories. In fact, it was this article that touched off Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas.

Memo’s From the National Affairs Desk

And he cried mightily with a strong voice, saying Babylon the great is fallen, is fallen, and is becoming the habitation of devils, and the hold of every foul spirit and a cage of every unclean and hateful bird.’ – REVELATION 18:2

Richard Nixon is gone now and I am poorer for it. He was the real thing–apolitical monster straight out of Grendel and a very dangerous enemy. He could shake your hand and stab you in the back at the same time. He lied to his friends and betrayed the trust of his family. Not even Gerald Ford, the unhappy ex-president who pardoned Nixon and kept him out of prison, was immune to the evil fallout. Ford, who believes strongly in Heaven and Hell, has told more than one of his celebrity golf partners that I know I will go to hell, because I pardoned Richard Nixon.

Prisoner of Denver

Just 22, Lisl Auman was convicted in 1998 of the felony murder of a police officer, a crime she didn’t commit, and is serving life in prison without parole. This summer, three years after gonzo journalist Hunter S. Thompson began his campaign to free Lisl, Colorado’s Supreme Court will rule on her appeal.

Mark Seal joins Thompson in exposing the brutality, corruption, and arcane legal strategy which doomed an innocent young woman—and threatens every other American.

The Hippies

The best year to be a hippie was 1965, but then there was not much to write about, because not much was happening in public and most of what was happening in private was illegal. The real year of the hippie was 1966, despite the lack of publicity, which in 1967 gave way to a nationwide avalanche in Look, Life, Time, Newsweek, the Atlantic, the New York Times, the Saturday Evening Post, and even the Aspen Illustrated News, which did a special issue on hippies in August of 1967 and made a record sale of all but 6 copies of a 3,500-copy press run.

But 1967 was not really a good year to be a hippie. It was a good year for salesmen and exhibitionists who called themselves hippies and gave colorful interviews for the benefit of the mass media, but serious hippies, with nothing to sell, found that they had little to gain and a lot to lose by becoming public figures.

Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas

We were somewhere around Barstow on the edge of the desert when the drugs began to take hold. I remember saying something like “I feel a bit lightheaded; maybe you should drive…” And suddenly there was a terrible roar all around us and the sky was full of what looked like huge bats, all swooping and screeching and diving around the car, which was going about 100 miles an hour with the top down to Las Vegas.

And a voice was screaming: “Holy Jesus! What are these goddamn animals?”

The Song of the Sausage Creature

There are some things nobody needs in this world, and a bright-red, hunch-back, warp-speed 900cc cafe racer is one of them – but I want one anyway, and on some days I actually believe I need one. That is why they are dangerous.

Everybody has fast motorcycles these days. Some people go 150 miles an hour on two-lane blacktop roads, but not often. There are too many oncoming trucks and too many radar cops and too many stupid animals in the way. You have to be a little crazy to ride these super-torque high-speed crotch rockets anywhere except a racetrack – and even there, they will scare the whimpering shit out of you… There is, after all, not a pig’s eye worth of difference between going head-on into a Peterbilt or sideways into the bleachers. On some days you get what you want, and on others, you get what you need.

Fear and Loathing in America

It was just after dawn in Woody Creek, Colo., when the first plane hit the World Trade Center in New York City on Tuesday morning, and as usual I was writing about sports. But not for long. Football suddenly seemed irrelevant, compared to the scenes of destruction and utter devastation coming out of New York on TV.

Even ESPN was broadcasting war news. It was the worst disaster in the history of the United States, including Pearl Harbor, the San Francisco earthquake and probably the Battle of Antietam in 1862, when 23,000 were slaughtered in one day.

Rare Early Articles

Some of Hunter S. Thompson’s rare articles, downloadable in PDF. Among the titles are – Big Sur: The Tropic of Henry Miller – Hunter S. Thompson (Rogue Oct. 1961), “It Ain’t Hardly That Way No More” – Hunter S. Thompson (Pageant Sept. 1965), The 450-Square Mile Parking Lot – Hunter S. Thompson (Pageant Dec. 1965), Why Boys Will Be Girls – Hunter S. Thompson (Pageant Aug. 1967), Nights In The Rustic – Hunter S. Thompson (Cavilier Aug ’67), War Correspondent – Hunter S. Thompson (War News March 2nd 1991), Community of Whores – Hunter S. Thompson (Northwest Extra May 1990), Another Vicious Attack – Hunter S. Thompson (Northwest Sextra, Long Hot 1990 Summer), Song of the Sausage Creature – Hunter S. Thompson (Cycle World Mar. ’95).

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• About Author

Fear and Loathing in America

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Fear and Loathing in America: The Brutal Odyssey of an Outlaw Journalist (1968–1976) is a collection of hundreds of letters   Hunter S. Thompson wrote (as well as a handful he received) after his rise to fame with his 1966 hit   Hell’s Angels: The Strange and Terrible Saga of the Outlaw Motorcycle Gangs . These letters deal primarily with Thompson and his editor at Random House, Jim Silberman, his correspondence with   Oscar Zeta Acosta, and his perpetually fluctuating relationship with   Jann Wenner, the founder of   Rolling Stone .

Through this time period, Thompson discusses   Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas ,   Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail ’72 , and his unending desire to see   The Rum Diary made   into a film.

In this second volume of letters — the first being   The Proud Highway: The Saga of a Desperate Southern Gentleman 1955–1967 —  an insight into Thompson’s eccentricity and brilliance is found.

Brazen, incisive, and outrageous as ever, Hunter S. Thompson is back with another astonishing volume of his private correspondence, the highly anticipated follow-up to The Proud Highway . When the first book of letters appeared in 1997,  Time pronounced it “deliriously entertaining”; Rolling Stone pronounced it “brilliant beyond description”; and The New York Times celebrated its “wicked humor and bracing political conviction.”

Spanning the years between 1968 and 1976, these never-before-published letters show Thompson building his legend: running for sheriff in Aspen, Colorado; creating the seminal road  book for Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas ; twisting political reporting to new heights for Rolling Stone ; and making sense of it all in the landmark Fear and Loathing: On the Campaign Trail ’72.  To read Thompson’s dispatches from these years — addressed to the author’s friends, enemies, editors, and creditors, and such notables as Jimmy Carter, Tom Wolfe, and Kurt Vonnegut — is to read raw, revolutionary eyewitness account of one of the most exciting and pivotal eras in American history.

Simon & Schuster

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Praise for Fear and Loathing in America: The Brutal Odyssey of an Outlaw Journalist :

“Hunter S. Thompson is the most creatively crazy and vulnerable of the New Journalists. His ideas are brilliant and honorable and valuable…the literary equivalent of Cubism: all the rules are broken.” — Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. 

“His hallucinated vision strikes one as having been, after all, the sanest.” — Nelson Algren

“He amuses; he frightens; he flirts with doom. His achievement is substantial.” — Gary Wills 

“There are only two adjectives writers care about anymore…’brilliant’ and ‘outrageous’… and Hunter S. Thompson has a freehold on both of them.” — Tom Wolfe 

Hunter S. Thompson Collection

Hunter s. thompson.

Hunter S. Thompson's seminal first three volumes of the "Gonzo Papers" are now available in a complete paperback set. Hunter S. Thompson's writing has had a profound effect on the literary world and contemporary culture. His signature searing commentary and outrageous humor once prompted a friend to comment, "I don't know what the f*** you're doing, but it's changed everything. It's totally gonzo." And from that moment, a new journalistic movement was born; a direct descendant of the New Journalism. Long after his death, his work remains brilliant, relevant, and exceptionally entertaining. "Thompson is a genuinely unique figure in American journalism, a superb comic writer and a ferociously outspoken social and political critic." —The Washington Post "Hunter Thompson is the most creatively crazy and vulnerable of the New Journalists. His ideas are brilliant and honorable and valuable the literary equivalent of Cubism: all rules are broken." —Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. "His hallucinated vision strikes one as having been, after all, the sanest." —Nelson Algren "He amuses; he frightens; he flirts with doom. His achievement is substantial." —Garry Wills The Great Shark Hunt Originally published in 1979, this is Dr. Hunter S. Thompson's largest and, arguably, most important work, covering Nixon to napalm, Las Vegas to Watergate, Carter to cocaine. Ranging in date from the National Observer days to the era of Rolling Stone, this collection offers highly charged entries, including the first 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 form of journalism 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. Generation of Swine The second volume of the legendary Dr. Hunter S. Thompson's bestselling "Gonzo Papers" was first published in 1988. Here, against a backdrop of late-night tattoo sessions and soldier-of-fortune trade shows, 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; all the while capturing momentous social phenomena as they occurred, like the rise of cable, satellite TV, CNN, and the 24-hour news cycle. Thompson showcases his inimitable talent for social and political analysis, eerily prescient, incisive, and enduring. Songs of the Doomed In this third and most extraordinary volume of the Gonzo Papers, first published in 1990, Thompson spares no one from his hilarious, remarkably astute social commentary. With his 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 freewheeling gonzo 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." This is vintage Thompson.

Published January 1, 2010

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