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skulls bashed in by the police. It was an experience that those close to Thompson regularly cited as a turning point in his relationship with not just authority but reality itself. As Thompson stopped seeing the world as something that could be righteously covered with the faux-objectivity of mainstream journalism, he changed the way that he wrote.

Thompson idealized Gonzo Journalism as the straight to the page publishing of raw notes scrawled in the heat of the moment, no editing, no rewriting. From the front lines to the front page with no second guessing in between. That was what he said Gonzo Journalism should be. It never really happened that way. Instead, Thompson developed a style that could be described as almost expressionistic, getting at a far greater truth about a topic by playing with the facts of the situation.

Published in 1970 in Scanlan's Monthly, "The Kentucky Derby is Decadent and Depraved" saw Thompson writing in a far more confrontational and profane style. Not content to sit back and report on the goings on at Churchill Downs, Thompson injected himself into the story. Interacting with derby attendees, often with bizarre or outrageous musings on things not even remotely related to the derby itself, Thompson dug below the genteel surface of the event to explore the chronic weirdness at the heart of the thing.

The success of "The Kentucky Derby . . . " opened the floodgates. A year later, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas was serialized in Rolling Stone Magazine and Thompson was given the opportunity to cover the McGovern Campaign for that same publication.

George McGovern's campaign manager Frank Mankiewicz said it best when he described Thompson's Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail 1972 as "The least factual and most accurate account" of the '72 political scene. Really, you can not get a better definition of the Gonzo style then that. To hell with the Facts. Let's look at the Truth of this thing.

After Campaign Trail, Thompson fell into a strange kind of limbo. Trapped between his madman public persona and the more traditional writer that he actually was, he continued to write for a wide variety of publications and put out a number of books. However, none of these endeavors met with the success of his earlier works.

This is not to say that he lost his edge, though you will find many who say exactly that. On September 12, 2009 Thompson used his online column at ESPN.com to deliver an analysis of the New America which proved prophetic to a

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