Rating: 
Summary: Who killed the American Dream?
Review: While Fear in Loathing in Las Vegas is a caustic and hilarious book, it is also prehaps Thompson's most somber. For all the violence and insanity, the drugs and freak-outs, at the heart of the book is a very sad notion: that whatever was good about the 60s had been lost. He writes: "There was a fantastic universal sense that whatever we were doing was right, that we were winning... 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." And suddenly it all disapeared. With the election of Richard Nixon had come the death of the sixties and the death of the American Dream. The deep regret over the failure of the great experiment is central to the work. Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas is a great novel, but it is even better journalism. To not read this book would be a crime.
Rating:
Summary: Brilliant. Just plain brilliant.
Review: I read "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas" when it was serialized in Rolling Stone and bought the book as soon as it was published. I lent my pristine first edition copy to a woman friend and never saw it again (check what they're selling for on eBay to see how much of a grudge I carry against her).
This is, without question, the definitive drug book and also a landmark achievement in American Literature (with a capital "L"). It also has the absolute best first paragraph of any book I've ever picked up.
I must have owned a dozen copies - now I buy paperbacks because they keep disappearing - and have re-read it at least that many times and it never fails to entertain.
But, at the risk of seeming sexist, I must assert that this is a "guy book." I have yet to find a woman who appreciates it on the level that the average male reader does. I won't explore why that may be. It just is.
While Thompson achieved a measure of recognition for "Hell's Angels" and some of his subsequent magazine work, "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas" was his breakthrough effort. I'm halfway through the second volume of his collected correspondence and am reading with interest the sequence of events that led up to F&L and how it came to be a book on its own, rather than getting folded into a larger work on the Death of the American Dream. It's also worth noting - though not particularly surprising to me - that he was NOT on drugs when he wrote it.
If you haven't read this book, you have a serious gap in your literary background. I advise you to read it before your better-read friends discover this serious deficit and humiliate you in public.
And don't think you know what's in the book if you only saw the Johnny Depp movie. Thompson's words and your mind's eye conjure images that go far beyond anything on a two-dimensional movie/TV screen. The movie is okay in a limited way, but the book is the thing.
Rating:
Summary: Pure Gonzo Journalism!
Review: Hunter S. Thompson is one of the greatest writers of our time and offers us an inside look into the psychadelic drug culture of the 1970s (that most of us missed out on). Hilarious and extremely entertaining from start to finish. You can't read it just once.
Rating:
Summary: "only for those with true grit-and we are chock full of it"
Review: I have read and re-read my copy of this book so many times the pages are all dog eared and the spine is on the verge of coming apart. In short this book is an absolute masterpiece. I don't think that there is any other book that will completely hold you in it's grip from the first to the last line in the way that this book will. 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"
Rating: 
Summary: A savage journey into the heart of the American Dream
Review: "We were somewhere over the desert near Barstow, when the drugs began to take hold." Throughout the book from this quote, the first sentence of the book, drugs have a strong hold on the two main characters. Fear And Loathing In Las Vegas, written by Hunter S. Thompson, depicts a savage journey into the heart of the American Dream. The story takes place in none other than Las Vegas in the foul year of our Lord 1971. It follows a Dr. of Journalism, Raoul Duke, and his Samoan attorney into a mind- mending trip through Vegas. Duke, residing in Los Angeles, is sent to cover a motorcycle race in Las Vegas called the Mart 400. For legal advice he takes his attorney because, in spite of his race, he is extremely valuable to Duke. For the trip they rent a fire apple red convertible and take with them, a collection of extremely dangerous drug. "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."
The story is told from Raoul Duke's point of view. Through him you are able to experience a whole smorgasbord of mind-altering drugs. Fear And Loathing In LaVegas is indeed a great piece of writing.
Rating:
Summary: hilarious... scary... incredible
Review: The story flys by; moving from comedy to tragedy and back again. But mostly comedy. Thompson is a gifted writer, there's no doubt about it. He makes the novel funny - it's not just the hilarious story doing that. His cynical, totally unique and offbeat writing style is exremely fun to read. Furthermore, he does actually look deeper than tons and tons of drugs (though maybe it's just through those drugs), and reflects on the 60s and the American Dream. Really. You will definately laugh, and possibly squirm at some of the situations they get themselves into. But if you've made it this far, you won't regret reading this novel. And also check out: "Fear and Loathing: on the Campaign Trail '72" if you are at all interested in politics.
Rating:
Summary: "Fear and Loathing," A Breath of Sanity for Some.
Review: The word "insanity" can easily be used to describe Hunter S Thompson's work within the pages of "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas." If you are a person that cannot see the sanity within the words: "As your attorney, I advise you to tell me where the god damn mescaline is." Then this may not be the brochure of life for you to follow. And it may be your lucidity in hazard from the readers that enjoy/understand this handbook. If your the type of person that, even though you haven't gone on a mescaline trip, you can still see the beautiful hypocrisy of life and understand that drug use is far from drug abuse, then this book is your guide. I see that within the quote, "...god damn mescaline", Hunter doesn't capitalize the "g" in "god." An important lesson I discovered while exploring the art of reading. It doesn't offend God when we use his name in vain, as long as the name is spelled using a lower case "g". He spells his name with a capital "G.". It is by this same rational thought process that I think God wants a certain chosen few to experience LIFE. Maybe, even the sub-culture of LIFE within the city limits of Las Vegas. To experience Vegas as Thompson describes it makes it just as it would be to space travel. You will travel to a place far away wHerEe iT onLy mAkEes seNse to take a "medication" that allows your body to behave in a manner that shows a person how little in control we really are. A place whEre iT oNLy mAkeS senSe to get thrown out of a Debbie Reynolds show, in search of the God sent laughter that is sure to follow. Yes, it is that planet I wish to experience life. Unfortunately, we all can't experience this place. But by Gods great gift, we can hear it described in a fashion that reminds us all the while to enjoy this joke of time we call LIFE.
Rating:
Summary: Great Gonzo Journalism
Review: The book is pure gonzo journalism full of fear, lothing and exotic drugs. Hunter S. Thompson writes a wonderful fast paced book about Las Vegas and being a part of the 70's drug culture and the failure of the American dream. Hunter S. Thompson and his attorny Dr.Gonzo set out on a mission to find the American dream in a fire red convertable from L.A. They set across the desert to Las Vegas. They find in Las Vegas a culture that is completly wrong for exotic drugs but find what the world would be like if the Nazis had won the war. With all the destroyed hotel rooms and strange characters you meet alone the way you will get lost in this amazing story.
Rating:
Summary: Loath in Fear
Review: This is an amazing novel that all should read late one evening and the read again every evening for the following year. It has things in it that you or I only dream of. Remember that one should read this book for the first time in the late hours of the night, with incents burning, lava lamps on. Read it in one sitting and it will be much more pleasurable. Read it sober and you will think you will not be. Read it in another state, and you shouldn't be in the Unites States.
Rating:
Summary: Fear and Loathing in Mize, Mississippi
Review: ... Those that are left can rest assured that this is a visceral trip of a book. Raul Duke and Dr. Gonzo go to Vegas taking heroic/insane amounts of every depressant, intoxicant, psychedelic, upper, downer... You get the picture. But this book resonates beyond that, telling the tale of a journalist disillusioned with America, and hell bent on discovering his own American Dream in a drug addled altered state. I will now ask you why you are still reading and not clicking the "Add To Shopping Cart" button.
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