Hunter S. Thompson

The editor's copy of the first edition, first printing of Hunter S. Thompson's account of his time spent with motorcycle gang the Hell's Angels.

• Hunter S. Thompson (American).
• Hell’s Angels: The Strange and Terrible Saga of the Outlaw Motorcycle Gangs.
• New York: Random House, 1967.
• Octavo.
• 278 pages.
• Black cloth, stamped in silver and red on cover and spine, photographic dust jacket.

From the collection of Jim Silberman and Selma Shapiro. Silberman was Thompson's editor at Random House, and his first book editor, full stop. Shapiro was head of publicity at Random House and worked on the book, and they later published Thompson at Summit Books, the imprint created for Silberman at Simon & Schuster.

Thompson's first published book was an expansion of his previous 1965 article for The Nation, "The Motorcycle Gangs: Losers and Outsiders," and involved him spending nearly a year documenting the San Francisco and Oakland chapters of the notorious gang. Although Thompson had been developing his form of Gonzo journalism for several years through shorter pieces in periodicals and newspapers, this publication marks the first iteration of that new style in a full-length book format.

From the collection of Jim Silberman and Selma Shapiro.