Autobiography of a Brown Buffalo by Oscar Zeta Acosta

Autobiography of a Brown Buffalo

Oscar Zeta Acosta, Hunter S. Thompson, Robin Desser

Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group · Print & ebook · July 17, 1989

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Genres
Hispanic & Latino Biography, Personal Memoirs, Writers' Lives
Published
Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group, July 17, 1989

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About this book

Before his mysterious disappearance and probable death in 1971, Oscar Zeta Acosta was famous as a Robin Hood Chicano lawyer and notorious as the real-life model for Hunter S. Thompson's "Dr. Gonzo," a fat, pugnacious attorney with a gargantuan appetite for food, drugs, and life on the edge.

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Written with uninhibited candor and manic energy, this book is Acosta's own account of coming of age as a Chicano in the psychedelic sixties, of taking on impossible cases while breaking all tile rules of courtroom conduct, and of scrambling headlong in search of a personal and cultural identity. It is a landmark of contemporary Hispanic-American literature, at once ribald, surreal, and unmistakably authentic.

Why It Clicks

Come here for

  • cultural-literacy context
  • layered, dip-in-friendly nonfiction

Expect

  • Autobiography-adjacent reading
  • Southwest history with a literary edge

Where it sits

Hispanic & Latino Biography97%
Writers' Lives37%
Personal Memoirs33%

Percentages are BookFrontier’s reading of the book.

Publisher categories

  • Biographical Fiction
  • Cultural Heritage Fiction
  • Hispanic & Latino Fiction
Authors
Oscar Zeta Acosta, Hunter S. Thompson, Robin Desser
Publisher
Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Published
July 17, 1989
Format
Print & ebook
Reading lane
Biographical Fiction