[In the following review, Ross praises Thompson's style but complains that his Better Than Sex is too disjointed.]

In Better Than Sex, Hunter S. Thompson has assembled a collection of mash notes—faxes to George Stephanopoulos, James Carville and others in the Clinton inner circle, missives that suggest Mr. Thompson's involvement in the Clinton Presidential campaign went beyond that of a mere observer. Mr. Thompson offers pointers on strategy and policy, even instructsthe candidate on speaking properly. Mr. Thompson is back in the form we've come to know and love (or at least tolerate), firing at the usual targets, from George Bush and James Baker 3d, the former Secretary of State, to Mr. Thompson's nemesis, Richard M. Nixon, who died just before the book was finished (but not before Mr. Thompson worked up a remembrance that may be charitably described as uncharitable). Such shooting from the hip is Mr. Thompson's forte; what disappoints in this book is its disjointedness. Better Than Sex reads like a hodgepodge, a series of dispatches hurriedly lashed together. But in his own cracked, inimitable style, Mr. Thompson proves to be an upbeat Jeremiah, a civic-minded curmudgeon. "It is a very elegant feeling," he writes, "to wake up in the morning and go down to your neighborhood polling place and come away feeling proud of the way you voted." Spoken like true patriot.