Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas: A Savage Journey to the Heart of the American Dream

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Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas: A Savage Journey to the Heart of the American Dream

4.09 of 5 stars 4.09 · rating details · 117,929 ratings · 3,068 reviews

Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas is the best chronicle of drug-soaked, addle-brained, rollicking good times ever committed to the printed page. It is also the tale of a long weekend road trip that has gone down in the annals of American pop culture as one of the strangest journeys ever undertaken.

Now this cult classic of gonzo journalism is a major motion picture from Univer...more

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Published 2005 by Harper Perennial (first published 1971)

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Feb 03, 2012 Jeffrey Keeten rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

When I was in college at the esteemed institution of the University of Arizona I scored a ticket to see Hunter S. Thompson. My book friends were green with envy or that could have been the pallor left from the drinking bout the night before. Anyway they all looked at me with that glint in their eye like I was in for a potentially perverted experience like going to a strip club with flying monkeys or a backroom orgy with nuns. They were all excited for me and I was feeling a little taller and a l...more

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Sep 17, 2007 Nathan rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition Recommends it for: People who want to read this lame, personal review.

Shelves: biography, fiction, history, history-crime

I recently went to Las Vegas for the first, and probably only, time in my life. I hadn't read this book in years, and previously, it hadn't even been my favorite Hunter S. Thompson work. Thompson is dearly missed by many people, and on a personal level, I miss him deeply. He spoke to a true astonishment at the complete, unrelenting fuckedupedness of America and her politics, and he did it with a bite that was deserved and unmatched. He probably could have been a very rich super-novelist of popul...more I recently went to Las Vegas for the first, and probably only, time in my life. I hadn't read this book in years, and previously, it hadn't even been my favorite Hunter S. Thompson work. Thompson is dearly missed by many people, and on a personal level, I miss him deeply. He spoke to a true astonishment at the complete, unrelenting fuckedupedness of America and her politics, and he did it with a bite that was deserved and unmatched. He probably could have been a very rich super-novelist of popular, uninspired filth. He probably could have been a brilliant novelist of any kind. But he chose to do what he did, and he did it better than any of his generation. Like Mark Twain, he chronicled American stupidity in the tongue of his generation, and he captured it perfectly, from the insanity of the drug experience to the depravity of American politics. For years, no work of his stood out to me as much as Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail '72 or the Gonzo letters. Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, to me, wasn't his best work. Then I went to Vegas. Suddenly, all the subtle differences between this and his other work made sense, and I realized that he had captured the true tackiness of the truest tacky city on the entire planet (though Dubai with their fucking Island fantasies are likely to take over soon). Fear & Loathing in Las Vegas IS Las Vegas. It's a nightmare, a joke, a blunder of comical, cosmically-fucked proportions. It's not Sin City. It's where Sin goes to die when it's embarrassed for itself. It's where families go on vacations with ten-year-olds, children who get handed fliers for prostitutes. It's the living, pulsing, filthing embodiment of the Holy Dollar. It's sensory overload on a scale drugs can't equal, a place where you almost have to take a brimful of Valium and a pint of ether to feel normal and not feel utterly ashamed at the state of the human condition. It would make you want to blow your brains out if it weren't so goddamned fun, even if you're gay, you hate gambling and hookers make your brain itch. Yet you never, ever feel like it is evil or subversive or curious in any way. It's just about a buck, and every other blink reminds you of it. This is a place where Hunter S. Thompson could easily mingle with a law enforcement convention and not get noticed. This is a place where a lawyer could leave you with a hotel bill. This is a place where no questions get asked because no answers would make sense, and the only thing profound about any of it is that you know, on a gut level, that all the oil used to produce all the plastic used to build that city no doubt funded an island shaped like Australia that was built off the coast of the UAE over the weekend. This novel will never cease to be important, and one day, as a cultural artifact of a forgotten culture from a forgotten nation, it will be one of the most important anthropological pieces in existence.

I wish he'd survived the Bush administration. We need this man.

NC(less)

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Jul 26, 2011 Shovelmonkey1 rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition Recommends it for: people who want to chalk up another alleged cult classic

Recommended to Shovelmonkey1 by: 1001 books list

Shelves: 1001-books, bookcrossing-books, read-in-2011

Whoop whoop, yeehaw, arrrrghflurszlegastle, shit shit shit drugs make you crazy. Yes, yes they do. So the first question is exactly how many drugs did Hunter S Thompson actually imbibe when writing this book. Either one too many or not enough would be my answer. First off, I'd like to critique the author photo on the inside sleeve of this book.

Hello.. there's Hunter S Thompson staring out from the page. He is wearing what can only be described as a three-tone patch-work denim shirt, and old-sko...more Whoop whoop, yeehaw, arrrrghflurszlegastle, shit shit shit drugs make you crazy. Yes, yes they do. So the first question is exactly how many drugs did Hunter S Thompson actually imbibe when writing this book. Either one too many or not enough would be my answer. First off, I'd like to critique the author photo on the inside sleeve of this book.

Hello.. there's Hunter S Thompson staring out from the page. He is wearing what can only be described as a three-tone patch-work denim shirt, and old-skool Aviators and draped in an American Flag. He's standing in front of a "clever" montage of boiled sharks jaws (a la Robert Shaws boat house in Jaws), another couple of miscellaneous animal skulls and a hunting knife which has been jabbed into the wooden shelf. Aside from the fact that I'm a vegetarian and not at all patriotic (towards America or even my own country), I have to say that three-tone denim is an extremely ill advised look Mr Thompson; one might even go so far as to say a mighty fashion faux pas, hence the loss of a star in the ratings. Moving on...

I didn't hate this book (or loath it) but I didn't exactly love it either (but am at the same time weirdly impressed and drawn in... shucks i'm upping the rating to a fat five stars). Cult status for this sort of thing is frequently imposed by people who look at this sort of tale as a potential bible to live by. Listen up kids, taking this amount of drugs would fuck you up so good that you would probably shit your brain out of your own ear and not even notice. I've never taken so many drugs as to shit my brain out of my own ear but I did once have my own Fear and Loathing style road trip experience.

A few years ago I was travelling from the Iranian Border to a town in a mountainous (read as not touristy) region of Turkey on the train. Three gentleman arrived at the station dressed as deeply religious local individuals (full on beards, prayer beads, traditional shalwar and skull caps), loaded their motor-bikes onto the rear of the train and proceeded to the yatakli car (sleeper car). After a while I encountered them again in the dining car and pretty quickly became sure that they were not local. After some hard eye-balling across the carriage we eventually struck up a conversation and it turns out that said gentlemen were en route back to their home town country of the Czech Republic having just been to Afghanistan. Their behaviour was a bit erratic and the random disguise was clearly falling apart after a large amount of beer and spirits were consumed. Every time we entered a tunnel they'd jump up on the tables and chairs, wave their arms over their heads and should wooloolooloooloooooo for as long as we were in the tunnel. Yes, you're thinking, this is not the behaviour of a sane/un-stoned person. Clearly.

When the beer had run out and we still had another 12 hours of train-trapped boredom to endure, they asked if I would like to join them for the rest of the journey and participate in a party. On offer was a share of some of the more high-end products that they claimed to have brought (in bulk) from Afghanistan. Having seen Midnight Express, I declined and returned to my seat.

About an hour later one of the individuals was so out of his mind that he decided to go into the main carriage and tried to climb into the overhead luggage rack for a sleep, after mistaking it for his own bed, then getting into a big argument with people who were unhappy about a man drooling and snoring on their suitcases. The gendarme were called (rather unluckily there was a whole platoon of them travelling at the rear of the train). The gentlemen were removed from the train, screamed at, severely kicked and pistol whipped, had a few AK47's pointed very levelly at their heads and advised in no uncertain terms that this was not an acceptable way to behave. The bottom line? Apparently you can only get away with this kind of behaviour in Vegas.(less)

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Jan 16, 2012 Lou rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

A gonzo journalist writing for sports editors hits the road on an assignment to Sin City with a trunk full of dangerous drugs that looked like a mobile police narcotics lab.

He had two bags of grass, seventy-five pellets of mescaline, five sheets of high powered blotter acid, a salt shaker half full of cocaine, and a whole galaxy of multi-coloured uppers, downers, screamers, laughers and also a quart of tequila, a quart of rum (there's a movie out Rum diaries starring Jonny Depp out now what a...more

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Sep 07, 2007 Lord Beardsley rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition Recommends it for: all of the two people over age 16 who haven't already read this

Shelves: read2007

You know, if this was the first of Mr. Thompson's books I had read, I never would have picked up another one. As far as I can tell, this is one of his weaker ones and is really the most well-known only for the long, droning drug bullshit. Reading drug writing is about as interesting is watching paint dry. There are little kernals of hilarity (because he's a fantastic writer who is able to describe pitch perfectly the bizarre ineptitude of the human experience) which saves it from being snoringly...more

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Dec 25, 2011 Courtney rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition Recommends it for: Druggies/Lovers of 70s Culture

Recommended to Courtney by: Alexa Kristensen

Shelves: 2011

This book is not so much about a character as it is about a culture - the drug culture of the 60s and early 70s. The manic way uppers and downers and LSD and hard liquor mix together with a little too much West Coast soul-searching.

There are a couple of things I really liked about this book. For one, the atmosphere of open Western desert is to me one of the most alluring places you can find in America. It's that original sense of Manifest Destiny. It's barren and untamed and there's a part of e...more This book is not so much about a character as it is about a culture - the drug culture of the 60s and early 70s. The manic way uppers and downers and LSD and hard liquor mix together with a little too much West Coast soul-searching.

There are a couple of things I really liked about this book. For one, the atmosphere of open Western desert is to me one of the most alluring places you can find in America. It's that original sense of Manifest Destiny. It's barren and untamed and there's a part of every generation's spirit that can find some inspiration from this. In the late 60s, of course, it was the vagabonds and the Kerouac types that were drawn in. I think Thompson did a pretty fantastic job of capturing the feeling of this part of the country - especially at this point in time. In the book, the main character says he is chasing the "American Dream." And isn't that what the West is all about?

Maybe Thompson was pointing out the lie of the American Dream. Here in the midst of the Los Angeles/Vegas slums, infested with drug-bingers, the "American Dream" is not only out of reach, but mocking them? Or maybe Thompson was saying even these guys, the ones reeling off LSD, are still, in their own way, searching for that American ideal. Maybe it was the ideal that pushed them to this? I'm not sure.

But either way, Thompson captures the tone of Vegas and Western US in a unique way.

I also enjoyed his descriptions of Las Vegas - even though I've never been to Vegas I could still feel its atmosphere and bizarre culture. The way freaks become the norm in a place like that, the way it must breed a particular type of drug culture. There must be a certain emptiness in Vegas - basically comprised of gamblers, drinkers and cokeheads filling up some void in their life by going to a place that profits from it. It was really interesting, I liked it.

Now, why this book was 3 stars and not 4 was just that I didn't feel very connected to the characters, themselves. There was a lot of description of the physical ridiculousness of this guy's drug-frenzies. Basically the book is in a heightened state of paranoia about being caught by the cops. I wish there had been more connection to the characters emotionally. But maybe that, too, is a statement. There can't be much more than surface-level in cities like Vegas or L.A. in the crowds this guy was running in. Not because they were superficial - but because at that point in a drug-dependent life, there's the same emptiness that is reflected in the city of Vegas itself. Emotional emptiness, maybe. I'm not sure.

I did like this book. I feel like this novel is a better anthropology of 60s drug culture than anything a textbook/PBS Documentary could give me. /Recommended. (less)

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Jan 02, 2008 Martin rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition Recommends it for: Those who buy the ticket and take the ride

A co-worker, whom happened to be completely insane, sized me up once and told me I was ready. He handed to me a VHS tape bearing the title, "Where the Buffalo Roam". At the time I was living a lifestyle of depraved decadence and over consumption of massive amounts of drugs and booze. While this particular journey had many peeks and valleys the next step in my literary evolution took place under a haze of pot smoke, a quart of rum and a pack and a half a day tobacco habit. After watching the movi...more A co-worker, whom happened to be completely insane, sized me up once and told me I was ready. He handed to me a VHS tape bearing the title, "Where the Buffalo Roam". At the time I was living a lifestyle of depraved decadence and over consumption of massive amounts of drugs and booze. While this particular journey had many peeks and valleys the next step in my literary evolution took place under a haze of pot smoke, a quart of rum and a pack and a half a day tobacco habit. After watching the movie with a roommate he stumbed off to his room but instead of retunring with a bong he handed me a copy of this book.

I will not kid you and say that being twisted on drugs won't help you understand this book more; it will. Not a necessity but once you dig deeper into the mind and works of one Hunter S. Thompson you will crave whiskey, beer and "...everyone narcotic known to mankind..." Enough of my story, this is after all a book review.

A virtually unkown writer was given a line of credit, a hotel room in Las Vegas, NV and an assingment to write a story that he never did. Instead after days of binging, purging and binging some more the man emerged with a cobbling of notes and tape recordings that he lashed together and handed to Rolling Stone magazine. While several other books were written prior to this tome, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas vaulted Hunter S. Thompson into the limelight. For better and worse "Gonzo Journalism" was born. The style is by the seat of your pants, insert yourself into the middle of your story and hope you come up with a comrprehsnible and most imporantly publisher worthy book in the end. Thompson invented it so I am not afraid to tell you he does it the best.

With his attorney at his side, Hunter searches for the American Dream, ponders the death of the free wheeling 60's and generally blows his own mind along with yours before the story ends.

If you are looking to dive into the world of Hunter S. Thompson this probably isn't the best way to start, but this is his Mona Lisa, his swan song, his coup de gras and the story that made him larger than life. My attorney has advised me to write as many reviews of his works as I can and I assure you this is only the first of many. Mahalo.(less)

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Aug 20, 2010 Greg rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

This is one of the few, if only times I will ever say this...go see the movie instead.

There was nothing wrong with this book mind you, had I never seen the movie before I would've considered it a totally original experience. But between the amazing portrail by Johnny Depp (and Del Toro), and the brilliant directing work by Gilliam, and the fact that the movie is an amazingly accurate adaptation of the source material, I can't really see a reason to read the book, when you can immerse yourself i...more

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Jun 04, 2012 Zaki rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Reading this is akin to going through a veritable roller coaster ride of Hunter S. Thompson’s mind: manic, frenetic and desultory.

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Jul 31, 2009 Mike rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: reviewed, own

This was the defining article of Thompson's famed Gonzo journalism approach. With this novel, he gave a wakeup call to both the previous generation, in which he took part in and supported the anti-conformist lifestyle, and the present generation, in which he rallied against the commercial and class values through his drug-induced antics and subsequent reports.
The book is a satirical expose which resulted from failed attempts to cover the 1971 Mint 400 race and the National Attorneys Association...more

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Mar 09, 2007 Jessie rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition Recommends it for: someone with an open mind

Shelves: faves

Hunter S. Thompson is my personal hero. He is an incredible writer. He lived his life with no fear and was willing to try anything or any drug. But despite the assumption that this book is all about drugs (ok, well most of it is about drugs) if you can look past that you will find a book that is so insiteful on human behavior. What most people fear and dream and wish and strive for. I think it is all summed up by my favorite quote from him:

"He who makes a beast of himself gets rid of the pain of...more

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Jul 18, 2012 James rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: literature, journalism

Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas is a masterpiece of paranoid monomania. Hunter S. Thompson and his lawyer in this quasi-fictionalized piece of memoir head off to Las Vegas in search of the American Dream. It’s an odyssey doomed to failure, and Thompson and his lawyer, the Samoan, are hell bent on enjoying that failure in one long ravenous drug-induced psychic meltdown.

Much of what goes on in this story is dependent on the reader buying into the absurdness of Thompson and his lawyer’s insane credu...more
Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas is a masterpiece of paranoid monomania. Hunter S. Thompson and his lawyer in this quasi-fictionalized piece of memoir head off to Las Vegas in search of the American Dream. It’s an odyssey doomed to failure, and Thompson and his lawyer, the Samoan, are hell bent on enjoying that failure in one long ravenous drug-induced psychic meltdown.

Much of what goes on in this story is dependent on the reader buying into the absurdness of Thompson and his lawyer’s insane credulity, the private commentary they indulge in partly because of the enormous amount/and variety of drugs they’re imbibing and partly because of the genuine ridiculousness of their mission, which seems to add the moral gravitas necessary for them to believe themselves not just binging but also pilgrimaging to a sort of promised land of doping equilibrium.

It’s insane, absurd, and the drama happens primarily inside the disconnected space that emerges between Thompson’s internal narrative voice (his whimsical and sometimes forceful gonzo meditative pan-outs from what’s happening) and the dazed misunderstanding of everyone else unwittingly drawn into the external fracas he portrays.

Also, Thompson is just a first-rate writer. I can’t remember a book where I found so many manicured and forensically descriptive aphorisms. His capacity to describe being on drugs is as powerful as Shakespeare on love and aging.

There is no rhyme or reason to their adventure: it’s already a failure from the start, and in a way, without Thompson probably knowing it, he seems to have dragged literature and its existential turn down into a vast, labyrinthine cul-de-sac, where it might never emerge again save in a blaze of .357 gunfire.

This book will entertain, disgust, and enlighten but never transform you. It is a taste of junky oblivion mixed with a firm distaste for the status quo, a real document of private, futile rebellion, a rebellion that is embedded deep in the American soul, in its dream of surfeit and endless promise.
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May 13, 2013 Amar Pai rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

fear and loathing in las vegas
starts out strong, best opening sequence ever
doing fast miles on the highway while carelessly handling very expensive drugs....
he jeers/jaunts at the locals, the money,
the shabby run down two-bit nature of it all
he hits the bar, the dirt races are off, another drink, dust everywhere, visibility zero
back at the hotel his "attorney" has kidnapped, drugged and done who knows what to this crazy lsd girl. she sits there drawing pictures of streisand with enormous shini...more

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Jun 27, 2007 Dan rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition Recommends it for: people who like drugs, hippies, freaks, americans

I was somewhere on the first page when the drugs began to take hold (of the protagonists.) Apparently, they were on the edge of the desert, somewhere near Barstow.

This book is amazing. This counter culture classics is one of my favorites.

Often criticized (alternately praised) as pro-drug, I did not get that impression at all. This book is about drugs and America. But it isn't necessarily for or against either one of those.

When Hunter wrote this, America was in the depths of assault by the counte...more

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Jul 09, 2009 Lilly G rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

i loved this book. i didn't *expect* to love it, which is why i had put it off for two years after receiving it. i'd read bits and pieces of thompson's work, but never sat down to read one end-to-end. now i know what i've been missing.

this book is everything i had hoped On the Road would be. a wild travel adventure with protagonists i would root for. they do disgusting, off the wall, unconscionable things, but they do it with such spirit that you can't help but laugh, over and over again.

a good...more

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Jan 01, 2013 Mark rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Having seen and enjoyed the movie years before picking up the book, I was apprehensive about how it would read. The movie is such a stream of consciousness with fantasy and an altered mind from drug use playing such a huge part of the narrative that I thought it would only really work visually.

I was therefore incredibly pleasantly surprised that not only did the book capture the feel of the shifting realities due to the drugs, but it was also easy and enjoyable to read. What I thought could only...more

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Feb 18, 2009 Trenton Judson rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

A masterpiece! One of the most underrated books in American literature. Thompsons search for the American dream is a journey that leads him through the absurd. This journey is taken at face value, as Thompsona and his "lawyer" alter their own perceptions to see the true absurdity of reality, the American dream, and Las Vegas. A great book to read in connection with this is Camus The Stranger. There is a lot more philosophy in Thompson's book than I ever thought was possible. A great surprise, wh...more

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Aug 04, 2012 Niño rated it 2 of 5 stars · review of another edition

I didn't like the book as much as I thought I would. It contained all sorts of crazy thoughts and internal monologues (some of which I was able to relate to). Forever sober people would probably not be able to connect to the characters much. Overall I found the book quite confusing and wasn't really able to follow the thoughts of the characters completely - maybe that's the whole point? A deeper look into a drug soaked mind. I was able to watch the movie 2 years ago which I enjoyed more, maybe b...more

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Jan 05, 2011 Brian rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas is the telling of Hunter S. Thompson's wild and hysterical drug filled romp in Vegas. It does a great job of depicting the hilarious insanity and paranoia of a drug binge. Vegas is the perfect place for all of these off the wall situations and responses. I read this over a Vegas weekend bachelor party - my trip wasn't quite this crazy. This novel has one of the better opening lines, 'We were somewhere around Barstow on the edge of the desert when the drugs began to...more

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Jun 30, 2008 Jeffrey rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: popular-fiction

Just out of curiosity, I read this book. Hunter is a classic. If you haven't read this one, do so. This comes across as an autobiography, but with Thompson you never know. A story of drugged out, super hip, insanity in a world gone wrong. Ahhh, yeah, this world. Has the world ever been right? No problems? Utopian? As the great Elastigirl always says, I don't think so.

More specifically, the book is a first-person account by a journalist named Raoul Duke on a trip to Las Vegas with Dr. Gonzo, his...more

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Jun 08, 2007 Sarah Sammis rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: released

It seems appropriate to be writing my review of this book while not quite in my right mind. I can't blame my state of mind on any of the drugs mentioned in the book; mine is just from a migraine. I've hallucinated twice, once when my mother gave me Dramamine in case I'd get sea sick on a whale watching trip (I've never gotten sea sick) and once when on Vicadin after Sean was born (I immediately stopped taking it after that). I've never gotten drunk to the point of losing control of myself or ne...more

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Jul 12, 2007 Cody rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas has a special place in my library as my first exposure to any kind of counterculture. I was raised in rural Indiana where dissension from the norm was not tolerated. At the time, Hunter S. Thompson's extreme rejection of everything that America stood for—particularly "the American Dream"—was something of a revelation to me. I still find it to be a fairly poignant indictment of American greed, the white upper classes, and even the daydreamers who don't actively try...more

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Feb 19, 2009 Leland rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: biography-memoir, american-lit

I read this book as a teenager, and must say it had a profound comedic influence. I tried re-reading it recently and found it completely unpalatable. This led me to the inevitable realization that I perhaps am not aging as well as this insane little book. Oh well. Everyone should have a Hunter S. Thompson phase in late adolescence, and they should forever after try their hardest to avoid him.

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Mar 08, 2008 dana rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

This book shaped my desire to start re-reading again. It pointed me in the direction of gonzo/transgressive fiction that is really my favorite fiction genre. People on the edge, outsiders who are insiders in their own world.

Hunter sent me looking for characters who I could relate to - the big fish in their respective odd ponds. Characters who don't dare to be different, but just plainly are - which is why we are attracted and repulsed all at once.

I read this as part of a modern Lit course with t...more

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Jan 23, 2008 Stacey rated it 2 of 5 stars · review of another edition Recommends it for: people I dislike.

I wasn't blown away by anything about this book. Maybe it's because it's been built up as such a classic or maybe it's because it's just bad. I don't think it was bad because I thought it was so out there and wild and crazy. I thought it was bad because it pretended just writing about being wild and crazy makes it immediately worthwhile. Two guys testing their luck by breaking every law made while in Vegas and doing a bunch of drugs. I need more than this. The book really didn't have a plot. Abo...more

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Mar 06, 2009 Cole rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

It was an extremely wild trip to read this book, and the other short stories are good as well. To keep it short as many other better critics than I have written about this book, but I feel like I understand Colin Richardson much better after reading this book.

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Apr 02, 2009 R. rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: 2009

Yeah, unfinished. But...but so was his life.

(removed from unfinished reads category)

***

So far, hilarious. Strikes me as odd that I've not been able to get beyond the first few pages in previous readings. Was in the biography section of the library - and is about as biographical, I'd venture, as A Million Little Pieces (which I finally found a used copy at Goodwill recently)...

The fact that this was written as a two-parter for Rolling Stone magazine is sad reminder of how The Internet Killed the...more

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Oct 01, 2012 ivoonaa rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

We had two bags of grass, seventy-five pellets of mescaline, five sheets of high-powered blotter acid, a saltshaker half-full of cocaine, and a whole galaxy of multi-colored uppers, downers, screamers, laughers... Also, a quart of tequila, a quart of rum, a case of beer, a pint of raw ether, and two dozen amyls. Not that we needed all that for the trip, but once you get locked into a serious drug collection, the tendency is to push it as far as you can. The only thing that really worried me was...more

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Aug 14, 2007 Abigail Gullo rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition Recommends it for: people going to Vegas

I finally read this classic while in the crazy town of Las Vegas for a family wedding. I got a real kick out of it. It is still so appropriate. That dessert town is probably even more surreal today then it was then. I don't know how they survived all those drugs. The 1970's must have been pretty wild.

Oh and that Dash Snow kid is just ripping Hunter S. Thompson off, right?! I mean the Nest? The Phone books??! "Oh but its art!" Give me a break, punkass. I wish he was here to Gonzo yer ass!

I'd lik...more

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Aug 23, 2007 Mike rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Imagine how Superman would have turned out if the young Clark Kent upon leaving Smallville had decided to subject his unique constitution to a toxic regimen of drugs and alcohol instead of doing time at the Planet. Riding that mortal carousel cranked full-speed sometimes the ride would flare into desert; long roads curved round a promise deferred, the yellow sun shading to black. Was Krypton real, or was he just another sucker playing a fools game? Only one way to find out: go to Las Vegas and e...more

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About Hunter S. Thompson

Hunter Stockton Thompson was an American journalist and author, famous for his book Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. He is credited as the creator of Gonzo journalism, a style of reporting where reporters involve themselves in the action to such a degree that they become the central figures of their stories. He is also known for his promotion and use of psychedelics and other mind-altering substanc...more

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Books by Hunter S. Thompson

Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail '72

The Great Shark Hunt: Strange Tales from a Strange Time

Kingdom of Fear: Loathsome Secrets of a Star-Crossed Child in the Final Days of the American Century

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Quotes from Fear and Loathing in L...

“No sympathy for the devil; keep that in mind. Buy the ticket, take the ride...and if it occasionally gets a little heavier than what you had in mind, well...maybe chalk it off to forced conscious expansion: Tune in, freak out, get beaten.” — 1,096 people liked it

“Too weird to live, too rare to die!” — 509 people liked it

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title link	preview: Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas: A Savage Journey to the Heart of the American Dream
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Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas: A Savage Journey to the Heart of the American Dream

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