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
,” “Strange Rumblings in Aztlan,” and “The Kentucky Derby Is Decadent and Depraved.”