First published in magazine in 1971, is told through Hunter S. Thompson’s story of an assignment he undertook with his attorney to visit Las Vegas and “check it out.” The book stands as the final word on the highs and lows of that decade, one of the defining works of our time, and a stylistic and journalistic tour de force. As Christopher Lehmann-Haupt wrote in , it has “a kind of mad, corrosive prose poetry that picks up where Norman Mailer’s left off and explores what Tom Wolfe left out.” This 50th-anniversary Modern Library edition features Ralph Steadman’s original drawings, a new introduction by writer Caity Weaver, and three companion pieces selected by Thompson: “Jacket Copy for ,” “Strange Rumblings in Aztlan,” and “The Kentucky Derby Is Decadent and Depraved.”