Fear and Loathing: The Strange and Terrible Saga of Hunter S. Thompson

xiv, 274 pp. This unauthorized biography takes off only when Perry, a former editor of Running magazine, describes the wacky/scary experience of engaging legendary gonzo journalist Thompson to report on the Honolulu Marathon in 1980, and when Thompson's illustrator sidekick Ralph Steadman tells of Thompson's paranoid trip to cover a heavyweight title bout in Zaire.