Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas - Hunter S. Thompson

Re-read this one as a break between some other books, after I watched the first half of the movie on TV late one night. Still a personal favourite, even with its flaws and shortcomings. If you want to understand what happened to the '60's - how peace and love became the '70's - then use this book as guide.

"There was madness in any direction, at any hour. If not across the Bay, then up the Golden Gate or down 101 to Los Altos or La Honda .... You could strike sparks anywhere. There was a fantastic universal sense that whatever we were doing was right, that we were winning ....

And that, I think, was the handle—that sense of inevitable victory over the forces of Old and Evil. Not in any mean or military sense; we didn’t need that. Our energy would simplyprevail. There was no point in fighting—on our side or theirs. We had all the momentum; we were riding the crest of a high and beautiful wave ....

So now, less than five years later, you can go up on a steep hill in Las Vegas and look West, and with the right kind of eyes you can almost see the high-water mark —that place where the wave finally broke and rolled back."