Bob Schwartz

“He who makes a beast of
himself gets rid of the pain of
being a man.”

—DR. JOHNSON

Read Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas: A Savage Journey to the Heart of the American Dream now. If you’ve already read it, read it again.

The last time I wrote about Hunter S. Thompson was during the 2016 presidential campaign (Hunter S. Thompson and Political Journalism) and right after the election (If Hunter S. Thompson Was Here).

At the time I thought we were experiencing political insanity, which Thompson was so good at reporting. Now that we are experiencing total insanity, Thompson is the one to tell the story—even if he originally wrote that story more than fifty years ago.

Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas appears to be a drug-saturated tale of a journalist and his lawyer covering a motorcycle race in Las Vegas. Some consider it a commentary on the craziness of the sixties. But as the title says, it is about much more. Whatever Thompson saw as the dark heart of the American Dream in the sixties he would now find in the insane heart of the twenties.

The epigraph of the book from Samuel Johnson might be about Thompson himself. Or it might be about the people he found himself among, in Las Vegas and in Washington D.C.

“He who makes a beast of
himself gets rid of the pain of
being a man.”

—DR. JOHNSON

© 2026 Bob Schwartz