On assignment from a sports magazine to cover "the fabulous Mint 400"--a free-for-all biker's race in the heart of the Nevada desert--the drug-a-delic duo stumbles through Vegas in hallucinatory hopes of finding the American dream (two truck-stop waitresses tell them it's nearby, but can't remember if it's on the right or the left). They of course never get the story, but they do commit the only sins in Vegas: "burning the locals, abusing the tourists, terrifying the help." For Thompson to remember and pen his experiences with such clarity and wit is nothing short of a miracle; an impressive feat no matter how one feels about the subject matter. A first-rate sensibility twinger, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas is a pop-culture classic, an icon of an era past, and a nugget of pure comedic genius. --Rebekah Warren

Product Description
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 Universal, directed by Terry Gilliam and starring Johnny Depp and Benicio del Toro.Opens everywhere on May 22, 1998.

This book and it's author have became cultural icons ever since it went to print in the early seventies. Plenty of other reviewers have gone into great detail about many of the notable qualities of this book: the hilarious dark humor of the two's drug induced antics and the razor sharp wit it is written with, the clarity in descriptions of the drug state, the spot on observations of the 'American way of life' as well as the counterculture of the '60s, the brutal honesty in which the author deals with negative and reckless acts commited by him and especially his attorny (which some find disturbing) and of course the shear genius in every page of this by all means flawless novel.

After reading this book too many times to keep count, although I still find it totally laugh out loud funny, I generally must say that Fear & Loathing in Las Vegas is ultimately a sad novel. Sure it's a road trip to cover a story in Las Vegas on hallucinogens, but I feel that overall it is the cronicle of a 'failed seeker'. I mean the search for the American Dream is unsuccessfull and you get the feeling from this book that it will always be an unfruitfull search as the American dream doesn't exist. The passages on how the energy of the '60s dissappeared are particularly moving in this way.

I cannot recomend reading this book enough, it is funny, witty, paranoid, dreamy yet crystal clear and written impecably well.

"Buy the ticket, take the ride"


More truer now than it was originally!   July 4, 1999
 30 out of 34 found this review helpful

I personally live just outside of Las Vegas, and just about everything the good doctor wrote about is still true (especially Circus Circus). I can only imagine what he'd think of the quasi-Disneyland attractions that are there now.

The drug content was to be expected at that era. The world was still in a white picket fence mode and "creative chemistry" was seen as a tool to escape from it (or at least, take a different view).

The stream-of-consciousness writing style is a wonder to behold. You can practically feel your mind bob-sledding through the ether-induced haze, coming to a landing on both feet.

As for weither or not it was real, get over it. Just wallow in the genius of the work; how it dissects the "American Dream" and how we were so rudely woken from it.

And if you've seen the film, READ THE FREAKIN' BOOK AS WELL! You will discover a favorite quote or two that you'll find yourself using over and over again. I laughed so hard reading it the first time, my face hurt!

It's a classic document of the tail end of the "flower power" generation, and the beginning of the narcisism of the 1970's. Classic American literature with sheer outright BALLS that's so dearly lacking in today's pop culture.

I am certain that when Dr. Thompson reaches his final reward, he will have a never-ending orgy held in his honor, just for writing this book.


I bothered to read THIS?   January 29, 2000
 23 out of 74 found this review helpful

This book is loathsome. I don't even rate it at all. It is incoherent, rambling, and remarkable solely for its subject - which CLAIMS to be realistic and drug-fuelled. It is sordid, squalid and depressing, with no redeeming qualities, except to convince one that drugs are just as you always thought they were. This book is overhyped, and nauseating. The cartoons merely annoy and irritate, especially the deliberately blotted pages. There is no insight into the human soul, or what passes for a human soul in these soulless victims of their own selves. I still do not believe that I read it all through, and will definitely never do so again. Never before has a book actually made me feel so physically sick - I would have flung it on the fire had there been one handy. The only thing it would be good for would be as compulsory reading in drying-out drug rehab clinics, to convince people that they don't deserve to demean themselves so miserably in this way again.

There is only one good episode in this entire work, involving a sportsman and a young fan, which genuinely shows some insight and considered attack upon the American dream. The rest of the book is all misanthropic attack, failing to satisfy the principal rule of satire - there MUST be at least some basis of the thing you are attacking in your attack, rather than just attack and nothing to show what you are attacking.