Douglas Brinkley

Imagine how Hunter Thompson might have covered the O.J. Simpson trial. Phil Bronstein, executive editor at the San Francisco Examiner, told me, "I thought Hunter would be the perfect person to write about the trial." They even met at a waterfront restaurant to discuss that possibility. "Hunter's face was all banged up," Bronstein recalled. "He claimed he had gone night-diving and scraped his face on a rock.

Kenneth M. Taylor, who was one of the first two Army Air Forces pilots to get airborne and engage the enemy after the Japanese launched their attack on Pearl Harbor and together shot down at least six enemy planes, has died. He was 86. Taylor, a retired brigadier general and former commander of the Alaska Air National Guard, died of natural causes Nov. 25 at an assisted-living residence in Tucson, said his wife, Flora. "The story of Lt.

This Sunday: John Reader on "African Ceremonies"; Sherman Alexie on Ian Frazier's "On the Rez"; Jonathan Levi on Robert Olen Butler's "Mr. Spaceman"; and Douglas Brinkley with an appreciation of Edward Abbey on the 25th anniversary of the publication of "The Monkey Wrench Gang."

Rolling Stone, the magazine that was home for years to Hunter S. Thompson, will publish a note written by the gonzo journalist days before he committed suicide in February. Douglas Brinkley, the presidential historian who is also Thompson's official biographer, writes in the issue due out today that a Feb. 16 note may be Thompson's final written words. It reads: "No More Games. No More Bombs. No More Walking. No More Fun. No More Swimming. 67. That is 17 years past 50.

The city editor of the New Orleans Times-Picayune is writing a book about Hurricane Katrina. It will be published by the Random House Publishing Group. According to Random House, Jed Horne's untitled book will be "an insider's narrative account of the Hurricane Katrina disaster that will locate its roots in the culture and politics of the city of New Orleans and in the national politics of oil, homeland security, poverty and race relations."

Hunter S. Thompson, the "gonzo" journalist with a penchant for drugs, guns and flamethrower prose, might have one more salvo in store: Friends and relatives want to blast his ashes out of a cannon, as he wished. "If that's what he wanted, we'll see if we can pull it off," said Douglas Brinkley, who said he was the family's spokesman. Thompson, 67, committed suicide Sunday at his home in Woody Creek, near Aspen.

A longtime aide to former President Carter has resigned from the Carter Center think tank, calling the former president's new book on Israel and the Arabs one-sided and filled with errors. Kenneth Stein, the Carter Center's first executive director and founder of its Middle East program, sent a letter to Carter and others bluntly criticizing the book.

Townsend W. Hoopes, 82, a former undersecretary of the Air Force during the 1960s who wrote one of the first accounts of President Johnson's decision to de-escalate the war in Vietnam, died Sept. 20 of complications from melanoma at a hospital in Baja, Calif. Hoopes had served as a senior advisor in the Defense Department before becoming Air Force undersecretary. After the 1968 Tet offensive by the North Vietnamese, Hoopes became convinced of the impossibility of winning the war.