"In the fall of 2004, Hunter S. Thompson visited Los Angeles for a signing at a place on the Sunset Strip called Book Soup."

"By the time I arrived in West Hollywood, the line already stretched three blocks long."

"This was the Hunter S. Thompson transformed by the Battle of Chicago at the 1968 Democratic convention, where he watched thousands of anti-war protesters get cornered and clubbed like Russian harp seals under the paternal watch of Mayor Richard Daley."

"After several years living in the Bay Area at the height of the acid era, Thompson saw the nations soul as locked in a Manichean struggle where his sideThe Good Guyswere destined to prevail."

"Thompsons Rolling Stone debut in October 1970 chronicled his stint managing the Aspen mayoral bid of a biker-lawyer named Joe Edwards."

"Hed sunk his book royalties into a heavily fortified compound in Woody Creek, a remote, snow-capped postcard not far from Aspen."

"meeting a deranged ex-Dead roadie turned acid casualty in a hotel bar, offering him your press credential, and letting the Boohoo run amok on Muskies Sunshine Special train across Florida."

"Its possible that On the Campaign Trail was the breaking wheel that irrecoverably shattered Thompson. Much of what he wrote afterward felt like a cheap self-parody. Of course, fame did him few favors. Neither did the cocaine habit that began in the mid-1970s, and by most accounts, continued for the remainder of his life. But this theory is only half true. In 74, Thompson witnessed Jimmy Carter give such a powerful speech at the University of Georgias law school that he threw his full weight behind the governors presidential run. And in 84, Thompson stumped for his longtime friend Walter Mondale before Ronald Reagan decimated him (Reagan makes a brief cameo in On the Campaign Trial for giving an RNC speech that makes Nixon look like a bleeding heart liberal). Despite the pain, Thompson never abandoned his addiction to politics, even titling a largely unreadable 1994 collection of faxes disguised as a book, Better Than Sex: Confessions of a Political Junkie. Toward the end of his life, he published a compendium of his ESPN.com page 2 columns called Hey Rube: Blood Sport, the Bush Doctrine, and the Downward Spiral of Dumbness. It was more of the same uninspired mad libs and Book of Revelations quotes that characterized the last two decades of his career."

"But on his way there, he spots the vets marching 1,200 deep in battle fatigues, helmets, and combat boots."

"But rather than win back Daisy Buchanan, the animating fantasy was a return to the Edenic possibilities of San Francisco in the mid-60sbefore the vultures and the violence and the exhumation of Richard Nixon."