The Revolt of the Cockroach People, Oscar Zeta Acosta
The Revolt of the Cockroach People, Oscar Zeta Acosta
List: $20.00 | Sale: $14.00
Club: $10.00

The Revolt of the Cockroach People

Author: Oscar Zeta Acosta

Narrator: Henry Leyva

Unabridged: 9 hr 6 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 04/02/2019


Synopsis

The further adventures of “Dr. Gonzo” as he defends the “cucarachas”— the Chicanos of East Los Angeles.

One of The Atlantic’s Great American Novels of the Past 100 Years

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.

In this exhilarating sequel to The Autobiography of a Brown Buffalo, Acosta takes us behind the front lines of the militant Chicano movement of the late sixties and early seventies, a movement he served both in the courtroom and on the barricades. Here are the brazen games of "chicken" Acosta played against the Anglo legal establishment; battles fought with bombs as well as writs; and a reluctant hero who faces danger not only from the police but from the vatos locos he champions. What emerges is at once an important political document of a genuine popular uprising and a revealing, hilarious, and moving personal saga.

About The Author

Born in 1935, OSCAR ZETA ACOSTA was an activist in the Chicano Movement and an attorney. His friendship with Hunter S. Thompson provided fodder for that author's best-known work, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, in which Acosta was dramatized as the eccentric Samoan attorney Dr. Gonzo. Acosta disappeared in Mexico in 1974 and is presumed dead.


Reviews

Goodreads review by Kim on February 02, 2015

My research into the Chicano Moratorium march in LA in 1970 led me to this book. I did not know of Acosta or that he was the model for Hunter S. Thompson's lawyer sidekick in "Fear & Loathing in Las Vegas." I only knew that this was the first novel I'd come across to address the marches by a Mexican......more

Goodreads review by Linn on April 20, 2020

Hade tyvärr för höga förväntningar på denna bok! Ändå skriven av Hunter S Thompsons legendariska advokat, men tyvärr saknas mycket av den galna ton som präglat Thompsons litteratur och det är vän egentligen mitt fel att förvänta mig att den ska finnas där även i Acostas litteratur. Större delen av b......more

Goodreads review by WadeofEarth on February 04, 2018

This was an eye opening account of a man, who's people I am co-citizens of the US with, but who's existence I as previously unaware of. The Chicano people lived for generations before Columbus, within the Southwest borders of the current United States, they are not Mexican, though they share some co......more

Goodreads review by seku on April 18, 2022

my mother-in-law recommended this to me and i am so glad she did. i fucking DEVOURED it. the description of Zeta's life is so fascinating and so fucked.......more

Goodreads review by R.K. on December 10, 2019

3 1/2 stars......more


Quotes

"Acosta has entered counterculture folklore:"

-- Saturday Review of Literature