The Footloose American: Following the Hunter S. Thompson Trail Across South America (Paperback) (ISBN-13: 9780770436377)

An adventure-filled and thought-provoking travelogue along Hunter S. Thompson's forgotten route through South America

In 1963, twenty-five-year-old Hunter S. Thompson completed a yearlong journey across South America, filing a series of dispatches for an upstart paper called the National Observer. It was here, on the front lines of the Cold War, that this then-unknown reporter began making a name for himself. The Hunter S. Thompson who would become America's iconic "gonzo journalist" was born in the streets of Rio, the mountains of Peru, and the black market outposts of Colombia.

In The Footloose American, Brian Kevin traverses the continent with Thompson's ghost as his guide, offering a ground-level exploration of twenty-first-century South American culture, politics, and ecology. By contrasting the author's own thrilling, transformative experiences along the Hunter S. Thompson Trail with those that Thompson describes in his letters and lost Observer stories, The Footloose American is at once a gripping personal journey and a thought-provoking study of culture and place.

Author: Brian Kevin
ISBN-10: 0770436374
ISBN-13: 9780770436377
Publisher: Crown Publishing Group (NY)
Language: English
Published: 05/20/2014
Pages: 384
Format: Paperback
Weight: 0.65lbs
Size: 7.90h x 5.10w x 0.90d

Review Citation(s):
Booklist 04/15/2014 pg. 12
Kirkus Reviews 05/15/2014
Outside 06/01/2014 pg. 16
Library Journal 06/01/2014 pg. 124