An anthology of top-selected "Rolling Stone" articles offers insight into both the late Thompson's early career and the magazine's fledgling years, in a volume that includes the stories of his infamous Freak Party sheriff campaign and his observations about the Bush-versus-Kerry presidential rivalry.

"By the early 1970s, President John F. Kennedy has survived several assassination attempts and--martyred, heroic--is now in his third term. Twenty-two-year-old Eugene Allen returns home from his tour of duty in Vietnam and begins to write a war novel--a book echoing Catch-22 and Slaughterhouse-Five--about veterans who have their battlefield experiences "enfolded," wiped from their memories through drugs and therapy. In Eugene's fictive universe, veterans...