Oscar Zeta Acosta. 
 
Straight Arrow Books: 1972. First edition. Hardcover. Octavo. Minor soiling on the boards, and a small water stain at the top of the front board. Corners of boards slightly bumped. 199 pages. Very good. 
 
Brown Buffalo is the first of two autobiographical novels inspired by Acosta's life as a down-and-out antipoverty lawyer in Oakland reborn into a Chicano activist. Acosta was also the inspiration for Hunter S. Thompson's Dr. Gonzo. A man with enough life to inspire his own novels as well as others' is worth reading, but a first edition that incarnates the gone-berserk and dying American dream is worth cherishing. 
 
"I stand naked before the mirror. Every morning of my life I have seen that brown belly from every angle."