Suggesting the nascent ideas and energy of his seminal book on the 60s experience, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, "Mescalito" features Duke's first mescaline trip. "We live in a jungle of pending disasters," the author warns. Alone in a hotel room in Los Angeles in February, 1969, Duke sustains a fever-pitched bout of paranoia so dark and depraved, it would make most mortals run fast-and far-from this kind of suicidal experimentation.

With savage wit, Thompson chronicles a doomed rendezvous in a Green Bay trailer park. The Packers have lost, and the author's friend - "a bad drinker and a junkie for mass hysteria" - has come unhinged. "Welcome to the night train."