Bad craziness. Dangerous lunacy. Permanent hysteria. But especially bad craziness. That is Hunter S. Thompson's real destination on his "savage journey to the heart of the American dream," and you know it from the first moment the drug-addled duo heave into view….

[Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas: A Savage Journey to the Heart of the American Dream] is a trip, literally and figuratively, all the way to bad craziness and back again.

It is also the most brilliant piece of writing about the dope subculture since Tom Wolfe's Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test and, at the same time, and acid, wrenchingly funny portrait of straight America's most celebrated and mean-spirited pleasure-dome, Las Vegas….

If you don't take it all on faith, Fear and Loathing comes off as the wretched excess of the year—an overwritten, underedited, foul-mouthed, drug-crazed screed. But if you do suspend your disbelief and climb...