Hunter Thompson

Hunter Thompson (1937-2005) was born in 1937 in Louisville, Kentucky. He was expelled from high school and enlisted in the U.S. Air Force, from which he was discharged in 1958. While serving, he covered sports for the base newspaper and began writing for local newspapers. He was one of the pioneers of what became known as "New Journalism" in the late 1960s. This innovative approach involved the journalist not just observing but participating in events and recording them with a subjective perspective, allowing each article to serve as a tool for political propaganda. His books documented the Hell's Angels gang, LSD experiments, U.S. colonial policies in Latin America, and Nixon's tours as "a provocative, disturbing, and scandalous depiction of America's dark side." A voice for an entire rebellious generation, he always went where the action was, lived countless wild nights under the influence of substances, and often found himself in courtrooms. He once said, "I don't like to advocate violence, drugs, alcohol, and insanity, but they've always worked for me." On February 20, 2005, Thompson committed suicide at the age of 67 on his farm in the mountains of Colorado, near Aspen, where he had lived in isolation in his later years.