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Summary: The most crazed and accurate account of a campaign, ever!
Review: You don't have to hate Richard Nixon to love this book (but it helps!). There are passages in this book that still make me laugh out loud 20 years after I first read it. Beyond that, HST was at the top of his form, weaving a maniacal tapestry of tales of debauchery, inside dope on what drives a campaign, and hard-nosed, clear-eyed evaluations of the losers who stormed the countryside looking for our votes. You can't read this book and ever think about Hubert Horatio Humphrey or Ed "Ibogaine" Muskie or Tricky Dick the same way. And when your read the pale, evenhanded "journalism" that recounts recent campaigns, you will long for HST back when he was in his prime
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Summary: Swimming the murky depths . . .
Review: Although it details the 1972 elections, there is nothing dated about Fear and Loathing. This is a book written on the spot - detailed, immediate, and darkly intelligent. It is about every election.
Dr. Thompson wrote this book while on the road with the unsuccessful McGovern campaign. He sat in the drug-addled press planes, rode the psychotic whistlestop tours, and ate breakfast in a hundred strange hotels around the country. With each successive chapter, you feel as though this election was a battle against the devil himself, and you are on the side of halucinating, drunken angels. You know the outcome, but you won't believe the trip. Essential American history.
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Summary: The Finest Political Journalism Ever Printed
Review: This is probably my favorite example of political journalism, in that it is informative, insightful, but never dull. I'm not one for long reviews, and I think all that I could say about this book has already been said by the other Amazon.com people. I just wanted to tack five stars onto this book. Thompson's work here and in Hell's Angels probably inspired hundreds of people to become journalists, and I am one of them.
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Summary: Excellent and Insightful Look at Presidential Politics
Review: All too often, Hunter Thompson's remarkable and vast journalistic production has been overwhelmed and deluded by his famous work, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. It would seem that most Thompson readers fail to see that Thompson's works, far from being one esoteric drug opus, range the spectrum of popular cultre, politics, and to a great extent a large segment of American history.
One of his best and most illuminating books, Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail 72, is written with the cutting commentary and breakneck pace so recognizable as Thompson. However, each comment and postulation is well researched and based on deep thought, even if enhanced by the occassional milky hit of Singapore Gray.
Thompson studies the 1972 Presidential election month by month, following both polls and candidates across the nation. Rather than see the election as a political institution, Thompson slices away the media fat and studies candidates, their motivations, and the varied behavior of the American constituency.
The author takes time to explore each candidate, although concentrating mostly on the Democratic Party, discussing their platforms on the major issues of the time: amnesty, the de-escalation of Vietnam, the civil rights movement, etc. and accurately and insightfully illustrates their place in not only the election, but in America during the early 1970's.
Thompson, having closely studied politics for innumberable years illustrates waves and trends throughout American politics, from 1964-72, with numerous and ultimately accurate predictions for the future.
Although a different work than Fear in Loathing in Las Vegas, a very interesting and personal look at American politics and Thompson the journalist. A must read for "politics junkies" as well as Thompson fans.
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Summary: MAYBE THE BEST POLITICAL BOOK EVER WRITTEN
Review: Hunter Thompson would despise me. I am a conservative Reaganite. I thought Dick Nixon a brilliant President. I think the Lord Jesus Christ saves my soul. Whereas I despise Michael Moore and do not think he speaks the truth, I admire Hunter Thompson, who is probably a lot closer to Moore's politics than mine. It is not just the passage of time that heals divisions, it is more than that. If I were to analyze Hunter's political nostrums, I would probably find much that I know to be wrong, and that Hunter had enough education and knowledge available to him to know it was wrong but he wrote it anyway. Still, whatever visceral reaction I have to Moore I do not have for Hunter.I guess humnor must be why. Hunter is absolutely inconoclastic. He is side-splitting. He never smiles, and his writing has no funniness in it. I picture him writing out of dread and hate, yet it magically transforms itself into laughs when my eyes meet his words and transfer to my brain. Forgive my bad attempt to get into his head and "explain" Hunter. It's all I can do to try. This book is phenomenal. It contains events that are different from any descriptions ever. Others have novelized reality, but nobody splits the difference like Hunter. Hunter's supposed on-scene reportage of Edmund Muskie coming unglued in the New Hampshire snow, Frank Mankiewiczs' furious (drug induced?) ramblings, the one-on-one with Nixon himelf, leaves the reader exhausted in an effort to separate reality from fantasy. Hunter is like the great con man who uses Truth to augment his lies. This is not calling Hunter a liar, it is just an example. The fact that I don't see this as lies is telling, and separates Hunter and his times from the current political climate, in which his spawn, if you will, the likes of Moore and Al Franken, try to make Hunteresque points but leave themselves exposed as obfuscators instead. The answer is that Thompson is just so much better than almost all other writers that he cannot be duplicated or even imitated. To try is pointless. Many, inclduing myself, have tried to be the "next Jim Murray," but like Murray nobody can be Hunter, either. STEVEN TRAVERS(...)
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Summary: On the trail of McGovern
Review: For all his gonzo journalism, Thompson has a very keen eye for politics, even if he backed McGovern in '72. This is a very engaging and very insightful study of the McGovern campaign and how, in Thompson's mind, it was the only hope in the miasma of politics at the time. He is unsparing on McGovern's opponents, particularly Humphrey, but saved his scorn for Nixon, whom the Democrats were desperately hoping to unseat. One of the most memorable scenes in the book (whether real or imagined) is when Thompson was called up to talk sports with the President himself on Air Force One. For a moment, Thompson puts down his guard, to engage in Nixon's favorite pastime, football. What you get is a heady mix of politics and humor as only the Grandmaster of Gonzo Journalism can give. The book remains unsurpassed in its candid view of a presidential political campaign.
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Summary: The best study of modern American politics in practice
Review: Most political science texts are pedantic, dry, and boring. This one is not. The author is known for gonzo journalism; an essentially free association form of writing aided by copious intakes of drugs, hallucinogenics, alcohol, and God knows what else. It is a form of free-for-all frenzy that Thompson has elevated to a fine art. Initiates to this style of writing may be inclined to dismiss it as drug-crazed nonsense, but bear with the book, even though sections of it are marked with coarse, but funny, insults, tales of escapades under the influence, and frightful poems by the author. Admixed in this collage is the background story of the McGovern campaign of 1972, and a remarkable journey it is. Thompson closely examines the dynamics of groundroots politics, including issue formation, organization, campaign tactics, conventioneering, and the like. He shows you the Eagleton debacle, the abdication of labor's role in the Democratic Party, why Muskie failed miserably, the use of drugs by candidates, and a thousand other things you would never have thought about unless you are active in political campaigns. Overall, the book is a scintillating picture of America at the closing of the Vietnam era, and the effect this had on politics. I recommend the book very highly to anyone interested in the political process, INCLUDING professors, students, political operatives, and the person in the street. Thompson was out there. He saw the campaign in action and reports his views with great passion and by never being dull. I loved the book.
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Summary: Incredible book
Review: There are very few books about political campaigns that show passion - for the manic process, for the evil media handicapping that occurs, and ultimately for a candidate that the writer believes in. This book grabs you by the throat and throttles you, screaming "this F'ing matters!!!" The best book on American politics since Tocqueville.
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