That public men publish falsehoodsIs nothing new. That America must acceptLike the historical republics corruption and empireHas been known for years.Be angry at the sun for settingIf these things anger you.-Robinson JeffersReading Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail '72 during the 2016 primary season really drives home the point that the cynical view of politics is in fact the most accurate. The inner workings and machinations of a well-run campaign have so little to do with what the averag...

Hunter Thompson brings the same weird wit, fragmented headspace, and undeniable charm to this account of the 1972 presidential race. He's a man with political views after my own heart.

The year was 1972 but it could be 2012--heck, it could be nearly ANY year! Hunter S. Thompson covers the "truth" behind the 1972 campaign to either reelect the very divisive and seemingly unpopular President Richard Nixon, or elect one of a slew of potential Democratic candidates. In 1972 Nixon was seen as weak, with the VERY unpopular Vietnam War winding down, but far from over and only dim hope that the troops would be home soon. An economy that was increasingly under the grips of what could b...

Of all the possible books one can read, I picked up Hunter S. Thompson’s Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail ‘72 this year for two reasons. I wanted to know: 1. Are there parallels in Thompson’s coverage to what we’re experiencing in the era of Donald Trump? Was the Nixon campaign, and was Nixon as a candidate, as depraved and absurd as what we’re seeing today?2. Should I regret not going on the campaign trail? Is following a campaign a desirable pursuit for a journalist? Or do you just beco...

The received wisdom is HST is one of those authors you go mad for in your teens, and go off as an adult. That’s only partly true. I’ve never felt Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas captured the man best, merely his myth - and it was the myth that did for him as much as the drugs. But this book is the man.An English reader doesn’t need to know much about American politics to understand it. The facts are simple enough. The incumbent President, Richard Nixon, is scum incarnate; the long-shot challenger...

Ed: Any kind of campaign that taps that energy would...HST: Would generate a tremendous high for everybody involved in it.Ed: And would ultimately for you be another paramount experience- out there on the Edge?HST: Oh, absolutely. But you know you'd be killed, of course, and that would add to it considerably- never knowing when the bullet was coming.It's a wet and windy late January morning, with what looks like a squall outside, and it just occurred to me that Thompson would really have been lo...

Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail ’72 is a high-speed drive through the world of politics with none other than Hunter S. Thompson in the driver's seat (with a glass of Wild Turkey in his lap and a whole galaxy of multi-colored uppers, downers, screamers, and laughers in the trunk). For readers familiar with his earlier works, F&L on the Campaign Trail reads like Hell's Angels: A Strange and Terrible Saga mixed with Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. The blended style is great and makes for a

I re-read this in early 2016 out of a dim memory and a curious urge to compare the present-day Presidential campaign circus to the 1972 Presidential campaign zoo.The more things change, the more they stay the same, eh?The first time I read this I was young, in my mid-twenties. I didn't recognize the names. I laughed some and moved on. I didn't appreciate its savagery, or its brutal honesty. I just dismissed it as a longer version of Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas in a different city. My eyes wer...

I enjoyed this a lot, but in a kind of disgusted way. It was really interesting (I learned a lot about politics). It was also pretty depressing (I learned a lot about politics). I do really enjoy Hunter S. Thompson's crazed writing style, and the fact that he doesn't really mind offending people and will tell it like it is regardless makes it probably more of an informative book on this election than you might find elsewhere. I probably wouldn't recommend it if you're a Republican, but in that c...

Forget Primary Colors: A Novel of Politics. Even forget All the President's Men and The Selling of the President. Especially forget the overrated Game Change: Obama and the Clintons, McCain and Palin, and the Race of a Lifetime. The greatest book on a political campaign of all time is Hunter Thompson's Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail. Any author can look back at a campaign, but Thompson, despite being drunk or high or hung over for the duration of the election, predicted the future. He f...

So first off: this book is important. Thompson captures a volatile time in history, both politically and socially. He covers McGovern v. Nixon well but, more importantly, he speaks to the layman's outlook on politics: the corruption, the greed, the confusion, the madness. In his drug and alcohol stupors, Thompson manages to be more honest about the American political process than anyone else. It begs the question: if it takes being that strung out to accurately describe our system, isn't it time...

I prefer the earlier writing of Hunter Thompson - his writing that came before the ego induced Gonzo journalism.Thompson has so many moments of brilliant observations but way too much ranting and an unhealthy obsession with crime statistics and rape specifically. And when an author literally writes statements like "Now where was I?" the lack of such literary mores drown out the really insightful stuff for me.

I worked on this campaign in press advance and met Hunter Thompson while doing so, so this book was a look back at that time. Hunter may have been somewhat crazy but he was a good writer and had fascinating insights, as I recall from the distance of many years.

Hunter S. Thompson's political epic Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail '72 is a spiritual sequel to Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. Thompson continues his scathing and satirical, as well as retrospective, critique of the sixties and early seventies. No other writer has written so well on those years.Campaign Trail... is a scathing account of American politics and presidential campaigns. Thompson's journey centers on the McGovern-Nixon '72 election. Like a massive drug trip, the book gradual...

Ever since first seeing Fear & Loathing In Las Vegas and hearing more about Hunter S Thompson and his journalistic work I made it a mission in life to read as much of his material as possible and this is possibly his crowning jewel in my opinion, followed closely by his account of living with the Hell's Angels in the aptly titled Hell's Angels.There's no way of truly pinning down what makes this such a great read, although if you are familiar with Thompson you know you will enjoy his seething, s...

Jesus! Where will it end? How low do you have to stoop in this country to be President?As Thompson's reputation precedes him, I had no clue what to expect from this book. The drug-addled ramblings of a drunken madman, perhaps? Imagine my surprise to find his writing to be sharp, clear, keenly observant, and funny as hell.Oh, the madman pops up now and then with lines like - ...I was bored from bad noise on the radio and half-drunk from doing off a quart of Wild Turkey between the Chicago and Alt...

Nixon was the beginning of the end of the Golden Age of America, the subversion of the working class, the abuse of minorities, the testament to pure greed for money and power, that has led the Republican Party from the sensible charity and honesty of Eisenhower, to the depths of the terrifying clown, Trump, and his obscenely evil opportunists in the wreckage of the GOP.Hunter was here, at this moment of Nixon's criminal grab for power, close to the center of the obscenity, but only allowed to ta...

There's something to reading the words of an addict who both hates and can't live without his vices. And no, this has little to do with drugs. Hunter S. Thompson's truly tragic obsession was with the American Dream, and achieving it, in this work, through politics. And it's an utter balls up. For HST, for America, and for history as well.It has been a very very long time since I've read Thompson. Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas was my only other exposure to him and that was way back in that magic...

I have a longstanding affection for reading books in the locations at which the books take place. I developed this interest during an apoplectic fit of maudlin sophomoricism when, at 18, I spent the summer in Paris reading everything possible connected to 20th century literature in that city (the collected volumes of Anais Nin's diaries, Henry Miller's Parisian fantasies, even that Hemingway book that only starts in Paris (The Sun Also Rises?), all those surrealist manifestos, Andre Breton's ine...

The P.E. teacher, S.S. Gruppenführer Mr. Martin, in my view, was a sick bastard. If I'd known the word fascist at the time, I'd have called him that, too, but I was only 10 years old and not well informed. It was inimical to the power structure of Sanders Elementary School to undermine their own authority by telling us, and certainly, therefore, not their inclination to yank from his neck the lanyard that held the whistle that was always perched between his lips for constant blowing, which he di...