Journalist Raoul Duke (Thompson's alter ego) and his Samoan lawyer, Dr. Gonzo, race in a bright red convertible across the Nevada desert towards Las Vegas. What drives them forward, however, is not gambling in the famous local casinos, but the desire to find and thoroughly explore the fabled "American Dream" as well as the "wonderful possibilities" of the consumer lifestyle. Equipped with a wide variety of drugs, which they are not afraid to use in abundance, the central protagonists make their way through various places of the city of sin and its surroundings, while encountering more or less bizarre characters from the ranks of ordinary Americans - casino and hotel employees, policemen and journalists. Their journey is full of wild, unbridled humor, psychedelic visions and sometimes unbearable paranoia, as well as sharp and apt commentary on the well-known - and often false - ideals of contemporary American society. Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas represents one of the most convincing and readable testimonies of the end of the hippie era, and at the same time it is a timeless text that has become a milestone in modern American literature and a fundamental work of so-called gonzo journalism, of which Thompson is the father.