Books

New York: Random House (1971), 1971. First edition. Hardcover. Very near Fine/very near Fine. 8vo. [12], 3-206 pp. Quarter black cloth over grey paper boards with a decoration in blind on the front board, silver lettering on the spine. Price of $5.95 on the front flap of the dust jacket. Jacket design by Susan Schwaab. Illustrated with in-text and double-page drawings by Ralph Steadman. Ahearn APG 002a. A stunning copy of Thompson's best known book, the story of a drug and booze-fueled road trip by the author and his "Samoan" attorney from California to Las Vegas. Thompson originally set out to complete a piece on sports journalism, but ended up producing a story on the seedy underbelly of Vegas, and a first-person narrative of the different places where drug use took him and his companion, Zeta-Acosta. A hint of toning to the spine panel.

Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas is the best chronicle of drug-soaked, addle-brained, rollicking good times ever committed to the printed page. It is also the tale of a long weekend road trip that has gone down in the annals of American pop culture as one of the strangest journeys ever undertaken.

A possible indicator for identifying a first edition, first printing, is the absence of additional printings listed on the copyright page, sometimes noted by a number line with '1' present.