New Releases by Hunter S. Thompson

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.

Enhanced by new biographical material, a visual biography collects the gonzo journalist''s photography and archives, featuring many photographs taken by Thompson himself, accompanied by writings and memorabilia.

‘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 ...”’

A wild ride to the dark side of Americana. Hunter S. Thompson''s and Ralph Steadman''s most eccentric book "The Curse of Lono" is to Hawaii what "Fear and Loathing" was to Las Vegas: the crazy tales of a journalist''s "coverage" of a news event that ends up being a wild ride to the dark side of Americana. Originally published in 1983, "The Curse of Lono" features all of the zany, hallucinogenic wordplay and feral artwork for which the Hunter S. Thompson/Ralph Steadmanduo became known and loved. This curious book, considered an oddity among Hunter''s oeuvre, was long out of print, prompting collectors to search high and low for an original copy. TASCHEN''s signed, limited edition sold out before the book even hit the stores--this unlimited version, in a different, smaller format, makes "The Curse of Lono" accessible to everyone.

An anthology of the best motorcycle literature from top authors including Hunter S. Thompson, Thomas McGuane, Robert Pirsig, Roald Dahl, Alberto Granado, and T. E. Lawrence Sons of Thunder is a high-octane anthology that brings together the best in motorcycle writing. This unique collection includes seminal pieces from Hunter S. Thompson and Robert Pirsig. Melissa Holbrook Pierson and Thomas McGuane offer probing reflections on the relationship between rider and machine. Roald Dahl waxes poetic on the second-hand Ariel 500cc he bought as a sixteen-year-old. There are classic dispatches from the road including T. E. Lawrence''s travels on his Brough Superior, Alberto Granado''s storied rides with Che Guevara, and Theresa Wallach''s overland journey with Florence Blenkiron from London to Cape Town. This anthology also offers hidden gems, such as Mike Carter''s midlife meditation "Uneasy Rider" and Jim Perrin''s "Travels with a Harley." Facing more than just the elements of the road, these riders simultaneously take physical and emotional journeys, surrendering to the mental release a bike brings. Danger lurks around every bend, but above all is the rider''s desire for speed, the constant craving to go faster and further than one has ever gone before. At times literary and lyrical, at others tactile and thrilling, Sons of Thunder takes to the road with an all-star roster of writers who delve into the pleasures and perils of motorcycles and celebrate the emotional bond between rider and machine.

An anthology of top-selected Rolling Stone articles offers insight into both the late Thompson''s early career and the magazine''s fledgling years, in a volume that includes the stories of his infamous Freak Party sheriff campaign and his observations about the Bush-versus-Kerry presidential rivalry.

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.

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.

A political journalist presents his frankly subjective observations on the personalities and political machinations of the 1972 presidential campaign.

The sultry classic of a journalist''s sordid life in Puerto Rico, now a major motion picture starring Johnny Depp

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.

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

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

Gonzo is a tour de force that will take you into the world of American writer and iconoclast Hunter S. Thompson.

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

Every book tells a story . . . And the 70 titles in the Pocket Penguins series are emblematic of the renowned breadth and quality that formed part of the original Penguin vision in 1935 and that continue to define our publishing today. Together, they tell one version of the unique story of Penguin Books. High priest of hedonism and godfather of gonzo journalism, Hunter S. Thompson was renowned for his counterculture masterpiece Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, which described his chemical-addled adventures in 1970s America. Taken from Thompson''s brilliantly entertaining autobiography, Kingdom of Fear - the last book published before his death earlier this year - these pieces provide a hilarious but now also painful insight into the life and the mind of a true literary outlaw.

Many had questioned the probability that Hunter S. Thompson would ever write a memoir. But the enigmatic legend of letters bucked the odds, resulting in a hilarious account of the making of the Gonzo journalist.

A collection of essays by Hunter Thompson that chart the high and low moments of his thirty-year career as a journalist

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

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.”

This first volume of the Fear and Loathing Letters begins with a high school essay written in 1955 - when Hunter S. Thompson was a wise (perhaps too wise) teenager in Louisville - and takes us through 1967, when the publication of Hell''s Angels made the author an international celebrity (and nearly resulted in his death). In the intervening years, Thompson''s prolific and often profound correspondence gives us an unforgettable vista of the America of the Eisenhower and Kennedy years as well as an authoritative introduction to the cultural revolution of the sixties. With a vicious eye for detail, a rude wit, and a brutal take on any and all pretenders, Thompson''s missiles pierce pomposity and rattle the soul. Whether written to his mother, Virginia, or to such luminaries as Charles Kuralt, Philip Graham, Norman Mailer, Tom Wolfe, Carey McWilliams, Lyndon Johnson, and Joan Baez, the letters represent the evolution of an American original, a singular voice defying an era of banality.

Gonzo Papers vol. 2 Most smart people tend to feel queasy when the conversation turns to things like certain death and total failure and the idea of a doomed generation. But not me. I am comfortable with these themes. Hunter S. Thompson, celebrated author of Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, has been writing a weekly column for the San Francisco Examiner for the last two years. Those columns are collected here to offer a chronicle of the adventures of a Generation of Swine. The incomparable Dr Gonzo has journeyed no small distance in search of intelligent life and reports back, instead, on the demented state of current events. He keeps tabs on the 1998 presidential race, quotes from the Bible (reference books in hotel rooms are supplied exclusively by the Gideons) and asks why the President appears to be a hundred and twenty-eight years old.