Hunter S. Thompson represents life on the edge, the counter to culture, the man who has listed his religion as none, his politics as anarchist, and his hobby as collecting guns. He claimed membership in the American Civil Liberties Union, the National Rifle Association, and the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws, and once ran for sheriff of Aspen, Colorado. Strange as it may seem, the drug-and alcohol-abusing Thompson at one time worked for Time magazine, the New York Herald Tribune, and the National Observer before he went straight and started writing for the voice of the counterculture, Rolling Stone, and invented "gonzo journalism," or at least that's the storyline. He was even turned into a character in the comic strip Doonesbury.

Hunter S. Thompson

Thompson made his first major visit to the edge in 1965, when he wrote an article...