The Proud Highway

by HunterS.Thompson (Author)

• New

  Paperback
  2011

  $15.90

  Before there was Gonzo, there was just plain Hunter -- a precocious, earnest, and occasionally troublesome honor student in Louisville, Kentucky. Before there was Doctor Thompson, there was Airman Thompson -- the military's answer to Grantland Rice, protecting America by covering sports for his Florida base's newspaper. Before there was Fear and Loathing, there was Dow Jones -- that is, Thompson's early reportage for that company's National Observer, which raised the standard for hip and provocative foreign coverage. Before there was Rolling Stone, there were job applications everywhere -- in hopes of being hired by a paper, pretty much any paper, an obsession for the starving writer with expensive tastes in alcohol, nicotine, and room service. In The Proud Highway, readers will find a Hunter S. Thompson they've imagined but never known. With the publication of these extraordinary letters, written from the time of his high school graduation in 1955 through the triumph of his first book, Hell's Angels, in 1966, critics and fans can finally trace the development and maturation of a singular talent, one of our era's most important voices. How Thompson changed the face of contemporary nonfiction -- and of America itself -- is the mesmerizing story of The Proud Highway.

• Used

  Paperback
  1998

  $5.54

  This is Hunter Thompson's perception of the 1960s as told through his letters from 1955 to 1967 (age 17 to 29). Addicted to drugs and alcohol at the time, Thompson's rage and drug-taking derived from his understanding of how much better the world could be, yet how little he could do to improve it.