FILE: Journalist Hunter S. Thompson sits at his typewriter, Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images

Around noon on a cold January day in 1973, Rolling Stone magazine’s book editor Alan Rinzler walked down the hall of San Francisco’s Seal Rock Inn, knocked on the door of Room 305 and braced himself. It was dark and cold and the man on the other side of the door was not expecting company.

Read the entire article here.