The Proud Highway: Saga of a Desperate Southern Gentleman, 1955-1967

Hunter S. Thompson was born on July 18, 1937 in Louisville, Kentucky. At the age of sixteen he was inducted into the Athenaeum Literary Association and wrote for the Athenaeum Journal. During his two years in the US Air Force, Thompson wrote a sports column for The Common Courier. After he was discharged, he moved to New York to work as a copy boy at Time Magazine and later moved to San Juan to write for a Puerto Rican bowling magazine. He also reported to the National Observer from South America. Upon his return to the US, Thompson wrote Hell's Angels: A Strange and Terrible Saga, which became a national bestseller and Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, which was originally published in Rolling Stone magazine. Thompson wrote for Rolling Stone, Playboy, and Esquire. Both Bill Murray and Johnny Depp portrayed Hunter in feature film movies based on his books, Where the Buffalo Roam and Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, respectively. Hunter S. Thompson committed suicide on February 20, 2005 at his home in Colorado. Douglas Brinkley was born in Atlanta, Georgia on December 14, 1960. He received a B.A. from Ohio State University in 1982 and a Ph.D. from Georgetown University in 1989. He was a professor at Tulane University, Princeton University, the U.S. Naval Academy, Hofstra University, and the University of New Orleans. In 2007, he became a professor at Rice University and the James Baker Institute for Public Policy. He is a commentator for CBS News and a contributing editor to the magazine Vanity Fair. His first book, Jean Monnet: The Path to European Unity, was published in 1992. His other works include Dean Acheson: The Cold War Years, The Unfinished Presidency: Jimmy Carter's Journey Beyond the White House, Wheels for the World: Henry Ford, His Company, and a Century of Progress, The Boys of Pointe du Hoc: Ronald Reagan, D-Day, and the U.S. Army 2nd Ranger Battalion, The Wilderness Warrior: Theodore Roosevelt and the Crusade for America, Cronkite, and Rightful Heritage: Franklin D. Roosevelt and the Land of America. He also wrote three books with historian Stephen E. Ambrose: The Rise to Globalism: American Foreign Policy Since 1938, Witness to History, and The Mississippi and the Making of a Nation: From the Louisiana Purchase to Today. He has won several awards including the Theodore and Franklin Roosevelt Naval History Prize for Driven Patriot and the Robert F. Kennedy Book Award for The Great Deluge: Hurricane Katrina, New Orleans, and the Mississippi Gulf Coast.