Grand unified books thread

[Savonarola]

I read "Hell's Angels: A Strange and Terrible Saga" by Hunter S. Thompson and, while Hunter will always be my favorite Doonesbury character, I'm not so sold on Gonzo Journalism.  There's some journalism there, but it reads a lot more like autobiography.  It is still a fascinating account of the outlaw motorcycle gangs in California at the time; he covers both the outlaws themselves (who were indeed menacing, and would eventually curb stomp Hunter) and the exaggerated public fear of them.

Tonitrus posted in the Trump thread:

A younger Christopher Hitchens kinda foresaw it 30 years ago...

...these rebels as they call themselves, these anti-establishment figures are nothing of the kind; they say they're against the government, they're lone pioneers and frontiersmen...but if the time should come when push came to shove these are the people who would be the freikorps, these are the people who would take orders, these are the people who would be the disciplined and docile forces of a government that would of course always regard them as deniable, and we have been warned.

Which fits in this book, the Oakland chapter of the Hells Angels attacked at Berkely anti-Vietnam War march during the course of the book.  Despite being self-proclaimed outlaws they respected strength and authority much like the stereotype of a MAGA supporter.

The book is set about three years before Altamont.  Mick Jagger really should have read this beforehand, it's obvious they were a terrible choice for security.  (The Grateful Dead had used the San Francisco chapter as security, but that was for block parties near Haight-Asbury, not for 250,000 people in the middle of nowhere.)  One of the principle angels in the book Sonny Barger, leader of the Oakland chapter, is also in the movie (he's the one who calls in at the end of the film - and the one who looks like he's considering kicking Mick Jagger's ass as he walks onstage during the concert.)

The book also features Ken Kesey and the Merry Pranksters.  At the time it was the fashionable thing to have a Hells Angel at your party for upper middle class Bohemians in the Bay Area - which usually went poorly.  Kesey was actually able to get along with them; for one thing Kesey was a large man, he had been a wrestler; and for a second he introduced them to LSD.  (Allen Ginsburg is also in it.)

The original article that this was in The Nation, and I thought it was strange that someone like Hunter, who would routinely get drunk and shoot out his apartment window would have articles in The Nation.  But, the last time I tried to read The Nation I think they had hired a bunch of people from Vice after it folded and I kept thinking it sounded like "This time around the revolution will be IN YO' FACE!" so maybe it's not so strange.