Name: Fear and loathing on the campaign trail '72
ISBN: 9780446312684

Fear and loathing on the campaign trail '72

Hilarious, terrifying, insightful, and compulsively readable, these are the articles that Hunter S. Thompson wrote for Rolling Stonemagazine while covering the 1972 election campaign of President Richard M. Nixon and his unsuccessful opponent, Senator George S. McGovern. Hunter focuses largely on the Democratic Party's primaries and the breakdown of the national party as it splits between the different candidates. With drug-addled alacrity and incisive wit, Thompson turned his jaundiced eye and gonzo heart to the repellent and seductive race for president, deconstructed the campaigns, and ended up with a political vision that is eerily prophetic

What Hacker News says

derwikiMar 2026

I usually see that referred to as High Frequency Trading

If you’re unfamiliar with HST, I highly recommend Hell’s Angels and Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail ‘72

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PaulHouleSep 2023

Don’t like the title, at least for this article.

When it comes to results like this it is more “lusting for clickbait” or the scientific equivalent thereof. (e.g. papers in Science and Nature aren’t really particularly likely to be right, but they are particularly likely to be outrageous, particularly in fields like physics that aren’t their center)

On the other hand, “Real Clear Poltics” always had a toxic sounding name to me since there is nothing “Real” or “Clear” about poltics: I think the best book about politics is Hunter S. Thompson’s Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail ‘72 which is a druggie’s personal experience following the candidates around and picking up hitchhikers on the road at 3am and getting strung out on the train and having moments of jarring sobriety like the time when he understood the parliamentary maneuvering that won McGovern the nomination while more conventional journalists were at a loss.

What I do know is 20 years from now an impeccably researched book will come out that makes a strong case that what we believed about political events today was all wrong and really it was something different. In the meantime different people are going to have radically different perspectives and… that’s the way it is. Adjectives like “real” and “clear” are an attempt to shut down most of those perspectives and pretend one of those viewpoints is privileged. Makes me thing of Baudrillard’s thorough shitting on the word “real” in Simulacra and Simulation which ought to completely convince you that people peddling the fake will be heralded by the word “real”.

(Or for that matter, that Scientology calls itself the “science of certainty.”)

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pimeysNov 2021

I'll add here my favorite book of his, the Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail '72, him getting sucked into politics and following the Democratic party campaign against Nixon, that lead to a landslide victory for Republicans. It is absolutely a fascinating read about the addictive nature of politics, how something that feels like an easy victory, against a horrible president, where you think you have the people behind you and how everything collapses in the end...

I think this is his masterpiece, I've read it a few times and tend to pick it up every ten years for a re-read.

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pimeysSep 2021

One of the most (in)famous american journalist, famous for inventing gonzo journalism, focusing on the writer themselves diving into situations and writing about it.

His political texts are excellent and I highly recommend the book Fear and Loathing on The Campaign Trail '72 for a good analysis on the McGovern vs. Nixon campaign.

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rhblakeJun 2017

Last year's US election often made me think of Thompson's brilliant book "Fear and Loathing: on the Campaign Trail '72", in which he mainly followed George McGovern's campaign, running against Nixon (Nixon ended up winning in a landslide). McGovern's campaign chief Frank Mankiewicz called it "the least factual, most accurate account" of the election... this quote in particular stood out:

"This may be the year when we finally come face to face with ourselves; finally just lay back and say it — that we are really just a nation of 220 million used car salesmen with all the money we need to buy guns, and no qualms at all about killing anybody else in the world who tries to make us uncomfortable. The tragedy of all this is that George McGovern, for all his mistakes... understands what a fantastic monument to all the best instincts of the human race this country might have been, if we could have kept it out of the hands of greedy little hustlers like Richard Nixon. McGovern made some stupid mistakes, but in context they seem almost frivolous compared to the things Richard Nixon does every day of his life, on purpose... Jesus! Where will it end? How low do you have to stoop in this country to be President?"

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NoGravitasJun 2017

Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail '72 will also make you swear he had a time machine. I guess the scale at which things change is longer than we think it is.

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