This book is hilarious. Buy this edition, as it contains an essay Thompson wrote about attending the Kentucky Derby that is absolutely brilliant (and also hilarious). The sort-of autobiographical account of Thompson's trip to Vegas with his fat-assed lawyer, ostensibly to cover a motorcycle race, but quickly becomes an account of human depravity the likes of which has not been read in literature since the Marquis de Sade. Luckily, Thompson isn't nearly the mindless hedonist many who have heard of him or even read this book consider him to be (sadly, he's used often in legitimizing ridiculous choices in life); look near the end of the story and you'll see that he viciously critiques what the world of drug-addled youth was, is, and will become. Gonzo journalism may not actually work for most people, but this book proves Thompson really could be productive and insightful while being completely fried at the same time. R.I.P., you crazy S.O.B.

The story is kind of terrible, but that's precisely what makes it so great. Somehow, in all the drug-addled confusion, it makes you think about the post-60s time - and the meaning of the truth.

Rarely do I come across a book that makes me laugh aloud, and this one has me laughing often. At the same time, it has some good nuggets of social-commentary and fast-paced writing. You gotta give it a read!

“Too weird to live, too rare to die!”
“In a closed society where everybody's guilty, the only crime is getting caught. In a world of thieves, the only final sin is stupidity.”
“We can't stop here, this is bat country!”
“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.”
“Good people drink good beer.”
“We 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-colored uppers, downers, screamers, laughers... and also a quart of tequila, a quart of rum, a case of Budweiser, 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.” “You better take care of me Lord, if you don't you're gonna have me on your hands.”
“Strange memories on this nervous night in Las Vegas. Five years later? Six? It seems like a lifetime, or at least a Main Era—the kind of peak that never comes again. San Francisco in the middle sixties was a very special time and place to be a part of. Maybe it meant something. Maybe not, in the long run . . . but no explanation, no mix of words or music or memories can touch that sense of knowing that you were there and alive in that corner of time and the world. Whatever it meant. . . .

History is hard to know, because of all the hired bullshit, but even without being sure of “history” it seems entirely reasonable to think that every now and then the energy of a whole generation comes to a head in a long fine flash, for reasons that nobody really understands at the time—and which never explain, in retrospect, what actually happened.

My central memory of that time seems to hang on one or five or maybe forty nights—or very early mornings—when I left the Fillmore half-crazy and, instead of going home, aimed the big 650 Lightning across the Bay Bridge at a hundred miles an hour wearing L. L. Bean shorts and a Butte sheepherder's jacket . . . booming through the Treasure Island tunnel at the lights of Oakland and Berkeley and Richmond, not quite sure which turn-off to take when I got to the other end (always stalling at the toll-gate, too twisted to find neutral while I fumbled for change) . . . but being absolutely certain that no matter which way I went I would come to a place where people were just as high and wild as I was: No doubt at all about that. . . .

There was madness in any direction, at any hour. If not across the Bay, then up the Golden Gate or down 101 to Los Altos or La Honda. . . . You could strike sparks anywhere. There was a fantastic universal sense that whatever we were doing was right, that we were winning. . . .

And that, I think, was the handle—that sense of inevitable victory over the forces of Old and Evil. Not in any mean or military sense; we didn’t need that. Our energy would simply prevail. There was no point in fighting—on our side or theirs. We had all the momentum; we were riding the crest of a high and beautiful wave. . . .

So now, less than five years later, you can go up on a steep hill in Las Vegas and look West, and with the right kind of eyes you can almost see the high-water mark—that place where the wave finally broke and rolled back.”
― Hunter S. Thompson, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas

Hunter S. Thompson Wow loved this book unfortunately I watched the movie first , but the book was hella good. I love it. A must read.

Probably his most celebrated work. This is the literary equivalent to "Up In Smoke" a sort of counter culture novel which is ironic as when I see drug people at the library they are usually not reading.

Hysterical

Satisfying in the way all HST books are. An erratic window into extreme drug-taking that makes you want to do it yourself.

4.5
I loved Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, but was not a fan of the next story. The Kentucky Derby one was pretty good though.

I would recommend this version because the following article, Strange Rumblings in Aztlan, gives the following story a new perspective that might change the way you read Fear and Loathing. Plus the piece on the Kentucky Derby is just amusing.

one word....DUUUUuuuUUuude!

I'm not sure what I'm reading.

It's like a cross between The Hangover and Infinite Jest.

This guy just seems to be stumbling around with no real purpose/can't be arsed to fulfil purpose. Journalism in fiction style seems ingenious but the drugs were too much for me and the two characters were not likeable at all. Finished F&L but had not inclination to read the other stories.