Books by Hunter S Thompson
Hell's Angels: A Strange and Terrible Saga
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.
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The Mutineer: Rants, Ravings, and Missives from the Mountaintop 1977-2005
1. Flexible Design: Can be used as a flat glue board trap or folded into a covered tent-like trap to protect the glue from dirt or debris.2. Powerful Adhesive: Manufactured with special glue, strong and evenly distributed. 3. Pet Safe: Vegetable oil will dissolve the glue if needed. Should be used in places not readily accessible to pets and children.Application: 1. Place trap near baseboards, corners, along walls, or in spaces where pests are likely to travel. Used either flat or folded into a covered trap. 2. Use with peanut butter as bait for better effect.
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Fear and Loathing in America : The Brutal Odyssey of an Outlaw Journalist
From the king of “Gonzo” journalism and bestselling author who brought you Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas comes another astonishing volume of letters by Hunter S. Thompson.
Brazen, incisive, and outrageous as ever, this second volume of Thompson’s private correspondence is the highly anticipated follow-up to The Proud Highway. When that first book of letters appeared in 1997, Time pronounced it "deliriously entertaining"; Rolling Stone called 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 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 a raw, revolutionary eyewitness account of one of the most exciting and pivotal eras in American history.
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The Rum Diary: A Novel
Made into a major motion picture starring Johnny Depp, The Rum Diary—a national bestseller and New York Times Notable Book—is Hunter S. Thompson’s brilliant love story of jealousy, treachery, and violent lust in the Caribbean.
Begun in 1959 by a twenty-two-year-old Hunter S. Thompson, The Rum Diary is a brilliantly tangled love story of jealousy, treachery, and violent alcoholic lust in the Caribbean boomtown that was San Juan, Puerto Rico, in the late 1950s. The narrator, freelance journalist Paul Kemp, irresistibly drawn to a sexy, mysterious woman, is soon thrust into a world where corruption and get-rich-quick schemes rule, and anything (including murder) is permissible. Exuberant and mad, youthful and energetic, this dazzling comedic romp provides a fictional excursion as riveting and outrageous as Thompson’s Fear and Loathing books.
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Hey Rube: Blood Sport, the Bush Doctrine, and the Downward Spiral of Dumbness Modern History from the Sports Desk
Sports, politics, and sex collide in Hunter S. Thompson’s wildly popular ESPN.com columns. From the author of Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas and father of “Gonzo” journalism comes Hey Rube.
Insightful, incendiary, outrageously brilliant, such was the man who galvanized American journalism with his radical ideas and gonzo tactics. For over half a century, Hunter S. Thompson devastated his readers with his acerbic wit and uncanny grasp of politics and history. His reign as "The Unabomber of contemporary letters" (Time) is more legendary than ever with Hey Rube. Fear, greed, and action abound in this hilarious, thought-provoking compilation as Thompson doles out searing indictments and uproarious rants while providing commentary on politics, sex, and sports—at times all in the same column.
With an enlightening foreword by ESPN executive editor John Walsh, critics' favorites, and never-before-published columns, Hey Rube follows Thompson through the beginning of the new century, revealing his queasiness over the 2000 election ("rigged and fixed from the start"); his take on professional sports (to improve Major League Baseball "eliminate the pitcher"); and his myriad controversial opinions and brutally honest observations on issues plaguing America―including the Bush administration and the inequities within the American judicial system.
Hey Rube gives us a lasting look at the gonzo journalist in his most organic form―unbridled, astute, and irreverent.
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Kingdom of Fear: Loathsome Secrets of a Star-Crossed Child in the Final Days of the American Century
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.
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FEAR & LOATHING IN LAS VEGAS : SAVAGE JOURNEY TO HEART OF AMER DREAM
50th Anniversary Edition • With an introduction by Caity Weaver, acclaimed New York Times journalist
This cult classic of gonzo journalism 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.
Also a major motion picture directed by Terry Gilliam, starring Johnny Depp and Benicio del Toro.
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$18.00
Songs of the Doomed
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.
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The Proud Highway: Saga of a Desperate Southern Gentleman, 1955-1967 (The Fear and Loathing Letters, Vol. 1)
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.
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$20.00
Better Than Sex: Confessions of a Political Junkie (Gonzo Papers, vol. 4) (Gonzo Papers, 4)
"Hunter S. Thompson is to drug-addled, stream-of-consciousness, psycho-political black humor what Forrest Gump is to idiot savants."
--The Philadelphia Inquirer
Since his 1972 trailblazing opus, Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail, Hunter S. Thompson has reported the election story in his truly inimitable, just-short-of-libel style. In Better than Sex, Thompson hits the dusty trail again--without leaving home--yet manages to deliver a mind-bending view of the 1992 presidential campaign--in all of its horror, sacrifice, lust, and dubious glory. 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.
"[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. Packed with egocentric anecdotes, musings and reprints of memos, faxes and scrawled handwritten notes (Memorable."
--Los Angeles Daily News
"What endears Hunter Thompson to anyone who reads him is that he will say what others are afraid to (.[He] is a master at the unlikely but invariably telling line that sums up a political figure (.In a year when all politics is--to much of the public--a tendentious and pompous bore, it is time to read Hunter Thompson."
--Richmond Times-Dispatch
"While Tom Wolfe mastered the technique of being a fly on the wall, Thompson mastered the art of being a fly in the ointment. He made himself a part of every story, made no apologies for it and thus produced far more honest reporting than any crusading member of the Fourth Estate (. Thompson isn't afraid to take the hard medicine, nor is he bashful about dishing it out (.He is still king of beasts, and his apocalyptic prophecies seldom miss their target."
--Tulsa World
"This is a very, very funny book. No one can ever match Thompson in the vitriol department, and virtually nobody escapes his wrath."
--The Flint Journal
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Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas
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.”
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$27.00
Generation of Swine: Tales of Shame and Degradation in the '80's
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.
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The Great Shark Hunt: Strange Tales from a Strange Time (Gonzo Papers, Volume 1)
The first volume in Hunter S. Thompson’s bestselling Gonzo Papers offers brilliant commentary and outrageous humor, in his signature style.
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.
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The Mammoth Book of Tales from the Road: Tales of Life on the Move (Mammoth Books)
by John Steinbeck, Jack Kerouac, Hunter S Thompson, J. G. Ballard
Combining classic stories with never-before-published work, The Mammoth Book of Tales from the Road travels along exotic as well as familiar pathways, covering territory from the erotic and romantic, to the chilling, adventurous, and humorous. From trails carved through dense jungle to six-lane superhighways, these travelers’ tales comprise cops and robbers barrelling down mean streets, summer roadtrip vacations gone wildly wrong, sentimental journeys made in hope and despair, wandering wise men, and post-apocalyptic road warriors. Created by master anthologist Maxim Jakubowski, this Mammoth collection features a mixture of legendary road stories plus a selection of brand-new, especially commissioned pieces. Includes excerpts from classics such as Kerouac’s On the Road, Steinbeck’s Travels with Charley, and James Ellroy’s Killer on the Road. There are also complete reprints of favorite stories such as John Hughes’s “Vacation ‘58” and hidden gems by the likes of Ed McBain, Hunter S. Thompson, William S. Burroughs, Brian W. Aldiss, J. G. Ballard, Lee Child, and Michael Dibden. The Mammoth Book of Tales from the Road also picks up new works from contemporary authors such as Alex Garland, Thomas S. Roche, Matt Thorne, Stella Duffy, and many others.
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Fear and Loathing at Rolling Stone: The Essential Writing of Hunter S. Thompson
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.
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Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail '72
The 50th anniversary edition of “the best account yet published of what it feels like to be out there in the middle of the American political process” (The New York Times Book Review) featuring a new foreword from Johnny Knoxville.
A half-century after its original publication, Hunter S. Thompson’s Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail ’72 remains a cornerstone of American political journalism and one of the bestselling campaign books of all time. Thompson’s searing account of the battle for the 1972 presidency—from the Democratic primaries to the eventual showdown between George McGovern and Richard Nixon—is infused with the characteristic wit, intensity, and emotional engagement that made Thompson “the flamboyant apostle and avatar of gonzo journalism” (The New York Times). Hilarious, terrifying, insightful, and compulsively readable, Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail ’72 is an epic political adventure that captures the feel of the American democratic process better than any other book ever written—and that is just as relevant to the many ills and issues roiling the nation today. As Johnny Knoxville writes in his foreword to this 50th anniversary edition: “Hunter predicted it all.”
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$22.99
Hunter S. Thompson: The Last Interview: and Other Conversations (The Last Interview Series)
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.
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Hunter S. Thompson Gonzo
"Gonzo" presents a rare look into the life of Thompson, whose groundbreaking style of "gonzo" journalism made him one of the greatest writers of his generation. For the first time, his photographs and archives have been collected into a visual biography worthy of his literary legacy.
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Conversations with Hunter S. Thompson (Literary Conversations Series)
by Hunter S Thompson, Beef Torrey, Kevin Simonson
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.
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Screwjack: A Short Story
by Hunter S Thompson, Lars Ulrich
A rare collection of wild and outlandish short stories—long thought to be lost—by literary legend Hunter S. Thompson.
Hunter S. Thompson’s notorious triptych Screwjack is as salacious, unsettling, and brutally lyrical as it has been rumored to be since its private printing in 1991.
“We live in a jungle of pending disasters,” Thompson warns in the opening piece “Mescalito,” a fictionalized chronicle of his first mescaline experience and what it sparked in him while he was alone in an Los Angeles hotel room in February 1969—including a bout of paranoia that would have made most people just scream no, once and for all. But for Thompson, along with the downside came a burst of creativity too powerful to ignore. The result is a poetic, perceptive, and wildly funny stream-of-consciousness take on 1969 America as only Hunter S. Thompson could see it. Screwjack just gets weirder with its second offering, “Death of a Poet,” which describes a trailer park confrontation with a deservingly doomed friend. The heart of the collection lies in its final, title piece, an unnaturally poignant love story ostensibly written by Thompson’s alias Raoul Duke from Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. What makes the romantic tale “Screwjack” so touching, for all its strangeness, is the aching melancholy in its depiction of the modern man’s burden.
Screwjack shows how brilliant a prose stylist Thompson really is, amid all the hilarity. As he puts it in his introduction, the three stories here “build like Bolero to a faster and wilder climax that will drag the reader relentlessly up a hill, and then drop him off a cliff...That is the desired effect.”
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$15.99