About this title: The best, the fastest, the hippest and the most unorthodox account ever published of the US presidential electoral process in all its madness and corruption. In 1972 Hunter S. Thompson, the creator and king of Gonzo journalism, covered the US presidential campaign for Rolling Stone magazine alongside the establishment newsmen of Washington. The result is a classic piece of subversive reportage and a fantastic ride on the rollercoaster of Hunter's uniquely savage imagination. In his own words, written years before Watergate: 'It is Nixon himself who represents that dark, venal and incurably ...
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Note: This is a general synopsis. Each listing is described below.
Description: Good. Shows some signs of wear, and may have some markings on the inside. Shipped to over one million happy customers. Your purchase benefits world literacy! read more
Edition: 19th Printing
Binding: Mass Market Paperback
Publisher: Warner Books Inc, New York
Date Published: 1992
ISBN-13:9780446313643ISBN:0446313645
Description: Good. 12mo-over 6¾"-7¾" tall. Tear to bottom of front cover at spine. Light shelf wear. Solid copy with tight binding and clean pages. read more
Binding: Mass-market paperback
Publisher: Warner Books
Date Published: 1985
ISBN-13:9780446313643ISBN:0446313645
Description: Good. No dust jacket as issued. 1076-Some cover wear, slight discoloration from age, but sturdy. Mass market (rack) paperback. Glued binding. 505 p. Contains: Illustrations. Audience: General/trade. read more
Edition: Illustrated.
Binding: Mass-market paperback
Publisher: Warner Books
Date Published: 1985
ISBN-13:9780446313643ISBN:0446313645
Description: Very good. No dust jacket as issued. Mass market (rack) paperback. Glued binding. 505 p. Contains: Illustrations. Audience: General/trade. read more
Binding: Mass Market Paperback
Publisher: Popular Library, New York
Date Published: 1974
ISBN-13:9780445082489ISBN:0445082488
Description: Ralph Steadman. Good. No Jacket as Issued. Black ink mark at the top of the first page. Some wear to the back cover. 12th printing. Classic account of the Nixon-McGovern election from the late Doctor. read more
Edition: Not Stated
Binding: Mass Market Paperback
Publisher: Warner Books Inc, Boston, Massachusetts, U.S.A.
Date Published: 1992
ISBN-13:9780446313643ISBN:0446313645
Description: Very Good. 0446313645 The book has some pen markings on the last page. read more
Binding: Mass Market Paperback
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Date Published: 1985
ISBN-13:9780446313643ISBN:0446313645
Description: New. Brand New! Buy with confidence-your satisfaction is guaranteed at B-Logistics! Due to the large scale of our operation, we do not have access to the specific contents/condition of our items. Please note that Expedited shipping is not available at this time. read more
Binding: Paperback
Publisher: Popular Library
Date Published: 1973
Description: Illustrated by Ralph Steadman. Very Good; Popular Library #445-08248. Reading crease, light rubbing, pages tanned. Mass Market PB; 12mo 7"-7½" tall. read more
Edition: Eleventh Printing
Binding: Mass Market Paperback
Publisher: Fawcett, New York
Date Published: 1974
ISBN-13:9780445082489ISBN:0445082488
Description: Very Good. 12mo-over 6"-8" Tall. Wraps rubbed. Shallow reading crease to spine. Page edges lightly spotted. A tight and unmarked copy. 505pp. Illustrations by Ralph Steadman. read more
"The first Hunter S. Thompson book I'd read in years, this was decent political journalism, but seemed to suffer a bit in the transition from magazine article to book. Having some foreknowledge of the events described was helpful, but I had to think that for a reader with less knowledge of U.S. history and politics the book would have been confusing and a bit tedious. Only a few segments (the Muskie vs. Yippie incident and the VVAW protests at the Republican convention) shone with Thompson's signature twisted bemusement at the absurdity of human society. Much of the rest seemed a little bogged down in electoral minutiae without an attempt at crystallizing it all into any kind of thesis. Perhaps this is inevitable, or a more honest approach, but I continually felt that Thompson wasn't doing enough to put the whole thing in perspective. He seemed to be writing strictly in the moment, never considering that his work would have to stand up to subsequent developments. The whole work seems to assume that the reader is seeing the events unfold on the evening news while reading Thompson's dispatches for some added behind-the-scenes perspective. Thirty-six years later this made the work seem thin somehow. Part of me wished that Thompson had done this in 68 or 1980, for that matter, as these elections seem in hindsight to be more stark turning points in U.S. politics. 72 seems to me more of an incremental step on the path that began with the Hippie/New Left hitting a wall in 68 and the cementing of "silent majority" neoconservative dominance in 1980. Not bad overall, but you can see why Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas and Hell's Angels are considered more important works."
"I'm really glad I didn't read this during the Obama campaign. A surprisingly thorough and informative look at the entire 1972 campaign, HST clearly is not just some drug-addled psycho but a honest-to-goodness journalist. He has a preternatural political instinct and understanding, as well as being openly biased and honest, which is refreshing. He's certainly unhinged though, and he admits constantly in the text that many articles were written frantically in a matter of hours due to his inability to cope with deadlines.
It was just too long and dry though, possibly because it consisted of dozens of individually palpable magazine articles compiled in one long and dense book. I'm obsessed with politics and I had to force myself to keep reading at times. The excessive insider information is just not as interesting as I thought it would be, or at least not enough to keep up interest for hundreds of pages, although I did learn a lot. This book is really fun to pick up and read 50 pages at random, but more difficult to read straight through.
This showed me a vastly different side of HST than I knew, one that increased my respect for the man as a professional reporter (albeit an extremely unconventional one), but decreased my respect for him as an off-the-rails lunatic who is merely ripping his employer off and pretending to cover whatever he's been assigned, the impression one gets after reading Las Vegas. If you are a politics nerd or want to be, maybe give it a shot, but if not, steer clear."
""A career politician finally smelling the White House is not much different from a bull elk in the rut. He will stop at nothing, trashing anything that gets in his way; and anything he can't handle personally he will hire out- or, failing that, make a deal. It is a difficult syndrome for most people to understand, because few of us ever come close to the kind of Ultimate Power and Achievement that the White House represents to a career politician...The presidency is as far as he can go. There is no more. The currency of politics is power, and once you've been the Most Powerful Man in the World for four years, everything else is downhill--except four more years on the same trip." (pg 357)
This passage is representative of how a large portion of this book is timeless and eriely applicable to our political atmosphere. This passage makes me think of Obama, and how we've all made him into this savior, a man who can seemingly do no wrong, but we must not forget two very important things: he is a politician, and it takes a certain kind of person to want to become the most powerful person on the planet. Now, I want him to succeed as much as the next hopeful citizen, but I feel that we have set ourselves up for inevitable disappointment.
Hunter S. Thompson is a frantic, impassioned, cynical, moderately insane writer. These articles, originally published in Rolling Stone during the Nixon/McGovern election, showcase a unique time in American history, as the nation staggered to the end of a revolutionary decade, full of equal parts of hope, despair, violence, love, disillusionment, rebellion, and distrust. Thompson captures it all and at times, embodies it all, as he becomes a kind of anti-hero, both disgusted and ammused, both pushing away from and pulling himself towards the mad machine that is American Politics.
I found it hard to keep myself engaged towards the middle of the book. There are just so many political figures, it was hard to keep them all straight at times, who stood for what, who belonged to what party, etc. But overall, I enjoyed his style and content. I found him to be extremely smart, brutally honest, and of course, funny.
"...We've come to the point where every four years this national fever rises up- this hunger for the Saviour, the White Knight, the Man on Horseback- and whoever wins becomes so immensely powerful, like Nixon now, that when you vote for President today you're talking about giving a man dictatorial power for four years. I think it might be better to have the President sort of like the King of England- or the Queen- and have the real business of the presidency conducted by a City Manager-type, a Prime Minister, somebody who is directly answerable to Congress, rather than a person who moves all his friends into the White House and does whatever he wants for four years. The whole framework of the presidency is getting out of hand. It's come to the point where you almost can't run unless you can cause people to salivate and whip on each other with big sticks. You almost have to be a rock star to get the kind of fever you need to survive in American Politics." (pg 469)"
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