Most famously depicted as the 300-pound, pill-popping Samoan attorney in Hunter S. Thompson's Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, Oscar 'Zeta' Acosta's wild, moving first book, originally published in 1972, reveals a man of astonishing variety. A converted Baptist missionary in Panama, bar hopper, psychiatric patient, struggling writer, heartbroken lover, great imposter, connoisseur of excess, Chicano activist, Brown Buffalo - Acosta did it all, then disappeared like a puff of smoke off the coast of Mazatlan, Mexico in the spring of 1974.