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BOOK 107: HELL'S ANGELS: HUNTER S. THOMPSON

Hell's Angels: The Strange and Terrible Saga of the Outlaw Motorcycle Gangs is a book written by counterculture icon Hunter S. Thompson, first published in 1966 by Random House. It was widely lauded for its up-close and uncompromising look at the Hells Angels motorcycle club, during a time when the gang was highly feared and accused of numerous criminal activities. The New York Times described Thompson's portrayal as "a world most of us would never dare encounter."

Hell's Angels was the book that launched Thompson's career as a writer. Though he had by then published numerous articles for various journals and newspapers and was recognized as a journalist, the book was his first true exposure to a national audience. Reviews of the work were generally very positive and despite a poor performance on the publicity tour by Thompson, who was by his own admission drunk or exhausted for nearly every interview, the book sold relatively well. Even so, Thompson himself made little off of the royalties from early editions of the book, a misfortune he blamed on a succession of agents and the book's publisher, Random House.

Thompson's treatment of an alleged gang-rape by Hells Angels was strongly criticized by feminist Susan Brownmiller in her 1975 book Against Our Will: Men, Women, and Rape.