Since his 1972 trailblazing opus, Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail, Hunter S. Thompson has reported the election story in his truly inimitable, just-short-of-libel style. In Better Than Sex, Thompson hits the dusty trail again - without leaving home - yet manages to deliver a mind-bending view of the 1992 presidential campaign, in all its horror, sacrifice, lust, and dubious glory. Complete with faxes sent to and received from candidate Clinton's top aides, and 100 percent pure gonzo screeds on Richard Nixon, George Bush, and Oliver North, here is the most true-blue campaign tell-all ever penned by man, beast, or Thompson.
Los Angeles Daily News
Thompson delivers yet another of his trademark cocktail mixes of unbelievable tales and dark observations about the sausage grind that is the U.S. Presidential sweepstakes. Packed with egocentric anecdotes, musings and reprints of memos, faxes, and scrawled handwritten notes...Memorable.
From Booklist
At some point, people as diverse as John Wayne and the members of Aerosmith appeared to achieve a kind of wisdom when they began to parody themselves. There are hints in Better Than Sex that HST is winking--broadly--at us. Sure, he's still a vicious, twisted psychotic thug who can write that Richard Nixon was criminally insane from birth, but he also closes any number of preposterous gonzo screeds with the equally preposterous, "Take my word for it, Bubba. I was there." This is Thompson's take on Clinton's campaign and his first year in office--and it's an outrage per page. Nobody escapes the good doctor's wrath: Bush is so guilty he makes Nixon look innocent; Clinton is a swine, but he's our swine; and Hillary is pilloried. Ross Perot, James Carville, Margaret Thatcher, James Baker III, Al Gore, and even Walter Cronkite also get savaged. Along the way, Thompson ruminates, occasionally quite shrewdly, nearly always hilariously, on politics, society, and, of course, himself. Better Than Sex is not better than Thompson's great Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail or the gonzo bible Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. Even so, a new book by Thompson is always an event. Thomas Gaughan
Book Description
"Hunter S. Thompson is to drug-addled, stream-of-consciousness, psycho-political black humor what Forrest Gump is to idiot savants."
--The Philadelphia Inquirer
Since his 1972 trailblazing opus, Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail, Hunter S. Thompson has reported the election story in his truly inimitable, just-short-of-libel style. In Better than Sex, Thompson hits the dusty trail again--without leaving home--yet manages to deliver a mind-bending view of the 1992 presidential campaign--in all of its horror, sacrifice, lust, and dubious glory. Complete with faxes sent to and received by candidate Clinton's top aides, and 100 percent pure gonzo screeds on Richard Nixon, George Bush, and Oliver North, here is the most true-blue campaign tell-all ever penned by man or beast.
"[Thompson] delivers yet another of his trademark cocktail mixes of unbelievable tales and dark observations about the sausage grind that is the U.S. presidential sweepstakes. Packed with egocentric anecdotes, musings and reprints of memos, faxes and scrawled handwritten notes (Memorable."
--Los Angeles Daily News
"What endears Hunter Thompson to anyone who reads him is that he will say what others are afraid to (.[He] is a master at the unlikely but invariably telling line that sums up a political figure (.In a year when all politics is--to much of the public--a tendentious and pompous bore, it is time to read Hunter Thompson."
--Richmond Times-Dispatch
"While Tom Wolfe mastered the technique of being a fly on the wall, Thompson mastered the art of being a fly in the ointment. He made himself a part of every story, made no apologies for it and thus produced far more honest reporting than any crusading member of the Fourth Estate (. Thompson isn't afraid to take the hard medicine, nor is he bashful about dishing it out (.He is still king of beasts, and his apocalyptic prophecies seldom miss their target."
--Tulsa World
"This is a very, very funny book. No one can ever match Thompson in the vitriol department, and virtually nobody escapes his wrath."
--The Flint Journal
From the Inside Flap
"Hunter S. Thompson is to drug-addled, stream-of-consciousness, psycho-political black humor what Forrest Gump is to idiot savants."
--The Philadelphia Inquirer
Since his 1972 trailblazing opus, Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail, Hunter S. Thompson has reported the election story in his truly inimitable, just-short-of-libel style. In Better than Sex, Thompson hits the dusty trail again--without leaving home--yet manages to deliver a mind-bending view of the 1992 presidential campaign--in all of its horror, sacrifice, lust, and dubious glory. Complete with faxes sent to and received by candidate Clinton's top aides, and 100 percent pure gonzo screeds on Richard Nixon, George Bush, and Oliver North, here is the most true-blue campaign tell-all ever penned by man or beast.
"[Thompson] delivers yet another of his trademark cocktail mixes of unbelievable tales and dark observations about the sausage grind that is the U.S. presidential sweepstakes. Packed with egocentric anecdotes, musings and reprints of memos, faxes and scrawled handwritten notes (Memorable."
--Los Angeles Daily News
"What endears Hunter Thompson to anyone who reads him is that he will say what others are afraid to (.[He] is a master at the unlikely but invariably telling line that sums up a political figure (.In a year when all politics is--to much of the public--a tendentious and pompous bore, it is time to read Hunter Thompson."
--Richmond Times-Dispatch
"While Tom Wolfe mastered the technique of being a fly on the wall, Thompson mastered the art of being a fly in the ointment. He made himself a part of every story, made no apologies for it and thus produced far more honest reporting than any crusading member of the Fourth Estate (. Thompson isn't afraid to take the hard medicine, nor is he bashful about dishing it out (.He is still king of beasts, and his apocalyptic prophecies seldom miss their target."
--Tulsa World
"This is a very, very funny book. No one can ever match Thompson in the vitriol department, and virtually nobody escapes his wrath."
--The Flint Journal
Better than Sex: Confessions of a Political Junkie ANNOTATION
America's greatest gonzo hits the hustings in this hilarious and timely report on last year's hideous race for the White House. The inimitable Thompson takes us on his special brand of a surreal campaign swing--and relives the lowlights, oddities, screwups, and the peculiarly telling moments that define a man and his longings. Thompson is the bestselling author of Generation of Swine.
FROM THE PUBLISHER
"Bill Clinton would have played the Jew's harp stark naked on 60 Minutes if he thought it would help him get elected. He is the Willy Loman of Generation X, a traveling salesman from Arkansas who has the loyalty of a lizard with its tail broken off and the midnight taste of a man who'd double-date with the Rev. Jimmy Swaggart." So writes famed political analyst Hunter S. Thompson in Better Than Sex, his groundbreaking, breathtaking, and escapading saga of what happens to campaign junkies behind the scenes of a victorious presidential campaign - their orgies, their despair, and finally their terror when they abandon all hope as the forces of darkness close in and make them prisoners in their own White House, where they cry out like doomed animals. As he did in such classics as Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail '72, Hell's Angels, and Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, Dr. Thompson has again wandered into the savage vortex of political power, and emerged, barely, with this bizarre tale of life within the Belly of the Great American Beast. Better Than Sex drags you into Mr. Bill's Neighborhood, a world full of fear that stretches from Pennsylvania Avenue to Hollywood to the squalid hills of the Ozarks, where power-crazed monsters like James Carville, Oliver North, and George Stephanopoulos seize control of a nation and wallow unashamed in a Palace of Power where the only governing ethic is raw lust. It is an ugly and disillusioning spectacle, one that only the merciful death of Richard M. Nixon - explored here in all its glorious symbolism - could defuse. Read it and weep, Bubba. We live in an ugly time and Thompson's cruel struggle with his political addiction is a matter of public record.
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