Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas by Hunter S. Thompson

This book became a classic on its publication in the early '70s, encapsulating the drug culture of that time and the resulting happenings. Thompson sets out to find the American Dream with his attorney while covering a motorcycle race in Las Vegas. The book is riddled with confusion, as the effect of the mescaline, pot, ether, rum, acid, amyls and tequila start to take force and the journey to get a story instead becomes a drug-induced mission which has no beginning or end.

Of course the book has been criticised and the sheer amount of drugs being ingested result in near (if not complete) drug-induced psychosis. Thompson, however, doesn't paint the picture as beautiful necessarily but includes every lurid detail, such as the state of the hotel room after only a few days of occupation and the several (although never-ending) collection of cancelled credit cards which he somehow manages to get away with using, without the police being called.

Perhaps one of the more amusing episodes in the book is when Thompson and his attorney stop off at a drugs conference which they find dated and boring. Posing as undercover police officers they weave tales from their imagination and several sober minds are persuaded by the two as to the despicable state of policing the drug scene. There is one part of the book written as a transcript (as according to the editor it made no sense), it's very amusing and the book is filled with black humour showing that although they had a wild time, you would not have wanted to be there with the knife-wielding attorney and Thompson himself who lives in a web of paranoia that the police are coming to get him (fair enough as they sometimes are).

The American Dream is found in the end, or not found as the case may be. Hidden inside you and if you want it you can have it. Although this book is filled with confusion, that is one thing that becomes clear by the end. This definitely gives an insight into drug-addled America in the 1970s in a similar way to Wolfe's The Electric Kool Aid Acid Test. This book should be read, no matter what your beliefs simply because (as cliched as this sounds) it's a classic.