H.l. Mencken's Books

A Second Mencken Chrestomathy

A New Selection from the Writings of America's Legendary Editor, Critic, and Wit

By: H. L. Mencken

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A Second Mencken Chrestomathy

A New Selection from the Writings of America's Legendary Editor, Critic, and Wit

By: H. L. Mencken

With a style that combined biting sarcasm with the "language of the free lunch counter," Henry Louis Mencken shook politics and politicians for nearly half a century. With a style that combined biting sarcasm with the "language of the free lunch counter," Henry Louis Mencken shook politics and politicians for nearly half a century. Now, fifty years after Mencken’s death, the Johns Hopkins University Press announces The Buncombe Collection, newly packaged editions of nine Mencken classics: Happy Days, Heathen Days, Newspaper Days, Prejudices, Treatise on the Gods, On Politics, Thirty-Five Years of Newspaper Work, Minority Report, and A Second Mencken Chrestomathy. Discovered among his private papers and edited by columnist Terry Teachout, this collection is full of the iconoclastic common sense that marked Mencken’s astonishing career as the premier American social critic of the twentieth century. This chrestomathy (“a collection of literary passages”) incorporates writings about a variety of subjects: politics, war, music, literature, men and women, lawyers, and the brethren of the cloth.

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532

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JHU Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

0801885493

ISBN 13

9780801885495

Heathen Days

Mencken's Autobiography: 1890-1936

By: H. L. Mencken

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Heathen Days

Mencken's Autobiography: 1890-1936

By: H. L. Mencken

With a style that combined biting sarcasm with the "language of the free lunch counter," Henry Louis Mencken shook politics and politicians for nearly half a century. Now, fifty years after Mencken’s death, the Johns Hopkins University Press announces The Buncombe Collection, newly packaged editions of nine Mencken classics: Happy Days, Heathen Days, Newspaper Days, Prejudices, Treatise on the Gods, On Politics, Thirty-Five Years of Newspaper Work, Minority Report, and A Second Mencken Chrestomathy. With a style that combined biting sarcasm with the "language of the free lunch counter," Henry Louis Mencken shook politics and politicians for nearly half a century. Now, fifty years after Mencken’s death, the Johns Hopkins University Press announces The Buncombe Collection, newly packaged editions of nine Mencken classics: Happy Days, Heathen Days, Newspaper Days, Prejudices, Treatise on the Gods, On Politics, Thirty-Five Years of Newspaper Work, Minority Report, and A Second Mencken Chrestomathy. In the third volume of his autobiography, H. L. Mencken covers a range of subjects, from Hoggie Unglebower, the best dog trainer in Christendom, to his visit to the Holy Land, where he looked for the ruins of Gomorrah.

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322

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JHU Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

0801885329

ISBN 13

9780801885327

Diary of H. L. Mencken

By: H.L. Mencken

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Diary of H. L. Mencken

By: H.L. Mencken

H. L. Mencken's diary was, at his own request, kept sealed in the vaults of Baltimore's Enoch Pratt Library for a quarter of a century after his death. The diary covers the years 1930 -- 1948, and provides a vivid, unvarnished, sometimes shocking picture of Mencken himself, his world, and his friends and antagonists, from Theodore Dreiser, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Sinclair Lewis, and William Faulkner to Franklin D. Roosevelt, for whom Mencken nourished a hatred that resulted in spectacular and celebrated feats of invective. From the more than 2,000 pages of typescript that have now come to light, the Mencken scholar Charles A. Fecher has made a generous selection of entries carefully chosen to preserve the whole range, color, and impact of the diary. Here, full scale, is Mencken the unique observer and disturber of American society. And here too is Mencken the human being of wildly contradictory impulses: the skeptic who was prey to small superstitions, the dare-all warrior who was a hopeless hypochondriac, the loving husband and generous friend who was, alas, a bigot. Mencken emerges from these pages unretouched -- in all the often outrageous gadfly vitality that made him, at his brilliant best, so important to the intellectual fabric of American life

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683

Publisher

Vintage

Published Date

ISBN 10

0307808866

ISBN 13

9780307808868

H.L. Mencken on Religion

By: H. L. Mencken

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H.L. Mencken on Religion

By: H. L. Mencken

No one ever argued more forcefully or with such acerbic wit against the foolish aspects of religion as H. L. Mencken (1880-1956). As a journalist, he gained national prominence through his newspaper columns describing the now-famous 1925 Scopes trial, which pitted Fundamentalists against a public school teacher who dared to teach evolution. But both before and after the Scopes trial, Mencken spent much of his career as a columnist and book reviewer lampooning the ignorant piety of gullible Americans.S. T. Joshi has brought together and organized many of Mencken''s writings on religion in this provocative and entertaining collection. The articles here presented demonstrate that Mencken canvassed the entire range of religious phenomena of his time, from evangelists Billy Sunday and Aime Semple McPherson, to Christian Scientists, and theosophists and spiritualists. On a more serious note are his discussions of the philosophy of Friedrich Nietzsche and the scientific worldview as a rival to religious belief. Also included are poignant autobiographical accounts of Mencken''s own upbringing and his core beliefs on religion, ethics, and politics.If anything was sacred to Mencken, it was the right to speak one''s mind freely, and many of his attacks are directed against those true believers who he felt tried to foist their beliefs on others to stifle independent thinking. For everyone who values freethought and sharp intelligence, this collection of articles by America''s premier iconoclast is a must.

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330

Publisher

Prometheus Books

Published Date

ISBN 10

1615920692

ISBN 13

9781615920693

My Life as Author and Editor

A Memoir

By: H.L. Mencken

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My Life as Author and Editor

A Memoir

By: H.L. Mencken

H. L. Mencken stipulated that this memoir remain sealed in a vault for thirty-five years after his death. For good reason: My Life as Author and Editor is so telling and uproariously opinionated that is might have provoked a storm of libel suits. As he recounts his career as a critic, essayist, and editor of the ground-breaking magazine Smart Set, Mencken brings us face to face with the literary aristocracy of his day, from the dour womanizer Theodore Dreiser to F. Scott Fitzgerald, drowning his gifts in alcohol. Here, too, are the hacks, poseurs, and bohemian crackpots who flocked around them. Most of all, here is Mencken himself, defying censors and Prohibition agents with equal aplomb in an age when literature was a contact sport.

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594

Publisher

Vintage

Published Date

ISBN 10

0307808882

ISBN 13

9780307808882

Mencken on Mencken

A New Collection of Autobiographical Writings

By: H. L. Mencken

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Mencken on Mencken

A New Collection of Autobiographical Writings

By: H. L. Mencken

Perhaps America's foremost literary stylist and most mordant wit, Mencken's most engaging writing told about his own life and experiences. In Mencken on Mencken, veteran Mencken editor and scholar S. T. Joshi has assembled a hefty collection of the best of Mencken's autobiographical pieces that have not appeared previously in book form. These forty-four selections cover a wide variety of topics ranging from incidents from Mencken's everyday life to reflections on friends and colleagues to his careers as author, journalist, and editor, to his travels abroad. Joshi has thoroughly annotated the pieces and also compiled an extensive glossary of names and terms that Mencken mentions. Mencken on Mencken offers a fully rounded self-portrait of one of America's most colorful personalities and most extraordinary men of letters.

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272

Publisher

LSU Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

0807137316

ISBN 13

9780807137314

Minority Report

By: H.L. Mencken

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Minority Report

By: H.L. Mencken

In the fall of 1948 H. L. Mencken, then at the top of his unmatchable form (he had spoken at a meeting of the American Philosophical Society in Philadelphia only a little while before), suffered a stroke. He soon recovered his physical vigor, but writing was for him a thing of the past. Some months before his death, in going through some papers that he was putting in order for deposit in his beloved Enoch Pratt Free Library in Baltimore, his long-time secretary discovered these Notebooks. Mencken meant to publish them, as he makes clear in the preface, which also describes them better than I can. Suffice it to say that here is one more generous sampling of the old Mencken battling fearlessly for the freedom and dignity of the individual and for the general decencies of life and attacking all that seems fundamentally hostile to man: government, organized religion, professional philosophers, and pedagogues above all. It shows his restless and inquiring mind ranging over many of the problems that beset all of us who ever take time out to think, all in his unmatchable style, which, however much it crackles, has the supreme virtue—which Henry always found in his own great model, Thomas Henry Huxley—that of never leaving you in doubt of its meaning. Read the preface and note that this book is precisely what its title suggests; it consists of hundreds of notes—some only a few lines in length, some running to several pages, all reflecting a rigorous and exhilarating mind and personality. It may be a long time before another like him crosses our path.

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304

Publisher

Knopf

Published Date

ISBN 10

030783090X

ISBN 13

9780307830906

H.L. Mencken's Smart Set Criticism

By: H. L. Mencken

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H.L. Mencken's Smart Set Criticism

By: H. L. Mencken

Welcome the long overdue re-release of Mencken's continual war against conventional thinking.

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396

Publisher

Regnery Publishing

Published Date

ISBN 10

0895262312

ISBN 13

9780895262318

The Vintage Mencken

By: Alistair Cooke,H. L. Mencken

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The Vintage Mencken

By: Alistair Cooke,H. L. Mencken

Many of the earliest books, particularly those dating back to the 1900s and before, are now extremely scarce and increasingly expensive. We are republishing these classic works in affordable, high quality, modern editions, using the original text and artwork.

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260

Publisher

Hadley Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

1406736007

ISBN 13

9781406736007

Happy Days

Mencken's Autobiography: 1880-1892

By: H. L. Mencken

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Happy Days

Mencken's Autobiography: 1880-1892

By: H. L. Mencken

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336

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JHU Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

0801885310

ISBN 13

9780801885310

Happy Days

By: H.L. Mencken

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Happy Days

By: H.L. Mencken

Though best known for his caustic newspaper columns, H. L. Mencken's most enduring contribution to American literature may be his autobiographical writings, most of which first appeared in the New Yorker. In Happy Days, Mencken recalls memories of a safe and happy boyhood in the Baltimore of the 1880s and celebrates a way of life that he saw swiftly changing—from a time of straw hats and buggy rides to locomotives and bread lines.

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256

Publisher

Knopf

Published Date

ISBN 10

030783087X

ISBN 13

9780307830876

Newspaper Days

Mencken's Autobiography: 1899-1906

By: H. L. Mencken

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Newspaper Days

Mencken's Autobiography: 1899-1906

By: H. L. Mencken

With a style that combined biting sarcasm with the "language of the free lunch counter," Henry Louis Mencken shook politics and politicians for nearly half a century. Now, fifty years after Mencken’s death, the Johns Hopkins University Press announces The Buncombe Collection, newly packaged editions of nine Mencken classics: Happy Days, Heathen Days, Newspaper Days, Prejudices, Treatise on the Gods, On Politics, Thirty-Five Years of Newspaper Work, Minority Report, and A Second Mencken Chrestomathy. With a style that combined biting sarcasm with the "language of the free lunch counter," Henry Louis Mencken shook politics and politicians for nearly half a century. Now, fifty years after Mencken’s death, the Johns Hopkins University Press announces The Buncombe Collection, newly packaged editions of nine Mencken classics: Happy Days, Heathen Days, Newspaper Days, Prejudices, Treatise on the Gods, On Politics, Thirty-Five Years of Newspaper Work, Minority Report, and A Second Mencken Chrestomathy. In the second volume of his autobiography, Mencken recalls his years as a young reporter.

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336

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JHU Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

0801885345

ISBN 13

9780801885341

American Language Supplement 1

By: H.L. Mencken

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American Language Supplement 1

By: H.L. Mencken

Perhaps the first truly important book about the divergence of American English from its British roots, this survey of the language as it was spoken-and as it was changing-at the beginning of the 20th century comes via one of its most inveterate watchers, journalist, critic, and editor HENRY LOUIS MENCKEN (1880-1956).In this replica of the 1921 "revised and enlarged" second edition, Mencken turns his keen ear on: • the general character of American English • loan-words and non-English influences • expletives and forbidden words • American slang • the future of the language • and much, much more. Anyone fascinated by words will find this a thoroughly enthralling look at the most changeable language on the face of the planet.

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Page Count

798

Publisher

Knopf

Published Date

ISBN 10

0307808785

ISBN 13

9780307808783

Heathen Days

By: H.L. Mencken

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Heathen Days

By: H.L. Mencken

In the third volume of his autobiography, H. L. Mencken looks back on his life and declares it "very busy and excessively pleasant." He imparts the impressive education he received from Hoggie Unglebower, the best dog trainer in Christendom, and the survival techniques he employed at Baltimore Polytechnic, where he learned to protect his fingers from power tools and his character from the influence of algebra. Mencken also describes the club boxing matches he attended, watching as the combatants in this gentleman's sport genteelly broke both bones and the law. And he recounts his voyage across the Atlantic that he, unlike Columbus, paid for himself. In Naples, he admired the garbage that seemed to have accumulated since Roman times. In Tunis, he searched for the ruins of Carthage. In the Holy Land, he looked for the ruins of Gomorrah, the Hollywood of antiquity, in hopes of finding evidence that the city's unparalleled reputation for wickedness was simply exaggerated.

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247

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Knopf

Published Date

ISBN 10

0307830888

ISBN 13

9780307830883

Treatise on the Gods

By: H.L. Mencken

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Treatise on the Gods

By: H.L. Mencken

I am quite convinced that all religions, at bottom, are pretty much alike. On the surface they may seem to differ greatly, but what appears on the surface is not always religion. Go beneath it, and one finds invariably the same sense of helplessness before the cosmic mysteries, and the same pathetic attempt to resolve it by appealing to higher powers."--from Treatise on the Gods H. L. Mencken is perhaps best known for his scathing political satire. But politicians, as far as Mencken was concerned, had no monopoly on self-righteous chest-thumping, deceit, and thievery. He also found religion to be an adversary worthy of his attention and, in Treatise on the Gods, he offers some of his best shots, a choreographed cannonade. Mencken examines religion everywhere, from India to Peru, from the myths of Egypt to the traditional beliefs of America's Bible Belt. He compares Incas and Greeks, examines doctrines, dogmas, sacred texts, heresies, and ceremonies. He ranges far and wide, but returns at last to the subject that most provokes him: Christianity. He reviews the history of the Church and its founders. "It is Tertullian who is credited with the motto, Credo, quia absurdum est: I believe because it is incredible. Needless to say, he began life as a lawyer." Mencken is no less interested in the dissidents: "The Reformers were men of courage, but not many of them were intelligent." Against the old-time religion of fellow countrymen, Mencken posed as a figure of old-time skepticism, and he reaped the whirlwind. Controversial even before it was published in 1930, Treatise on the Gods remains what its author wished it to be: the plain, clear challenge of honest doubt.

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298

Publisher

Knopf

Published Date

ISBN 10

0307830926

ISBN 13

9780307830920

On Politics

A Carnival of Buncombe

By: H. L. Mencken

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On Politics

A Carnival of Buncombe

By: H. L. Mencken

These seventy political pieces from the 1920s and 1930s are drawn from Mencken's famous Monday columns in the Baltimore Evening Sun.

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410

Publisher

JHU Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

0801885558

ISBN 13

9780801885556

Europe after 8:15

By: H. L. Mencken

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Europe after 8:15

By: H. L. Mencken

Henry Louis "H. L." Mencken (September 12, 1880 - January 29, 1956) was an American journalist, essayist, magazine editor, satirist, critic of American life and culture, and scholar of American English. Known as the "Sage of Baltimore", he is regarded as one of the most influential American writers and prose stylists of the first half of the twentieth century. This is one of his stories.

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Simon and Schuster

Published Date

ISBN 10

1609777239

ISBN 13

9781609777234

Newspaper Days

By: H.L. Mencken

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Newspaper Days

By: H.L. Mencken

The period covered is that of his professional nonage—from his entry into journalism as a reporter for the Baltimore Morning Herald in 1899 to 1906. It was not all Baltimore, however, for he went into brief exile when the fire of 1904 destroyed the plant and forced the paper to print in Philadelphia for five weeks. During those roaring years the young journalist did little, if anything, to bring uplift to his city, nor did he become an influential figure in the councils of state or nation. But he did gain a rare knowledge of his community in all its more colorful and uproarious aspects; and he has set them down here in his own inimitable way. It is not the great events of civic life that draw his attention, not the respectable—and dull—doings of respectable citizens. Rather it is the caperings of the judiciary on their days off, the mysterious and melancholy ways of the commercial artists who haunted the newspaper offices of the period, the peccadilloes and generosities of cops and cabbies, of madams and Baltimore’s omnipresent Afro-Americans that make up the bulk of this highly personal memoir. As such it brings to livid life the whole of an American city of sixty years ago. It is a book to read and savor, not only for its constant delightful humor, but for its fine picture of the salad days of American journalism as well.

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259

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Knopf

Published Date

ISBN 10

0307830918

ISBN 13

9780307830913

Dreiser-Mencken Letters, Volume 2

The Correspondence of Theodore Dreiser and H. L. Mencken, 197-1945

By: Theodore Dreiser,H.L. Mencken

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Dreiser-Mencken Letters, Volume 2

The Correspondence of Theodore Dreiser and H. L. Mencken, 197-1945

By: Theodore Dreiser,H.L. Mencken

This book is a volume in the Penn Press Anniversary Collection. To mark its 125th anniversary in 2015, the University of Pennsylvania Press rereleased more than 1,100 titles from Penn Press's distinguished backlist from 1899-1999 that had fallen out of print. Spanning an entire century, the Anniversary Collection offers peer-reviewed scholarship in a wide range of subject areas.

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Page Count

536

Publisher

University of Pennsylvania Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

1512805998

ISBN 13

9781512805994

Thirty-five Years of Newspaper Work

A Memoir by H. L. Mencken

By: H. L. Mencken

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Thirty-five Years of Newspaper Work

A Memoir by H. L. Mencken

By: H. L. Mencken

With a style that combined biting sarcasm with the "language of the free lunch counter," Henry Louis Mencken shook politics and politicians for nearly half a century. Now, fifty years after Mencken’s death, the Johns Hopkins University Press announces The Buncombe Collection, newly packaged editions of nine Mencken classics: Happy Days, Heathen Days, Newspaper Days, Prejudices, Treatise on the Gods, On Politics, Thirty-Five Years of Newspaper Work, Minority Report, and A Second Mencken Chrestomathy. With a style that combined biting sarcasm with the "language of the free lunch counter," Henry Louis Mencken shook politics and politicians for nearly half a century. Now, fifty years after Mencken’s death, the Johns Hopkins University Press announces The Buncombe Collection, newly packaged editions of nine Mencken classics: Happy Days, Heathen Days, Newspaper Days, Prejudices, Treatise on the Gods, On Politics, Thirty-Five Years of Newspaper Work, Minority Report, and A Second Mencken Chrestomathy. Written in 1941–42, these highlights capture the excitement of newspaper life in the heyday of print journalism.

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Page Count

436

Publisher

Wordsworth Editions

Published Date

ISBN 10

0801885566

ISBN 13

9780801885563

Friedrich Nietzsche

By: H.L. Mencken

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Friedrich Nietzsche

By: H.L. Mencken

The decisive influence of Friedrich Nietzsche on H.L. Mencken is readily acknowledged in the vast literature on the great American journalist and social critic. However, Mencken's 1908 study of the philosopher has been relegated to footnote status by Mencken's critics and biographers and has been largely ignored by Nietzsche scholars. There are good reasons for reversing this judgment. Mencken's work was one of the first comprehensive and sympathetic treatments of Nietzsche's thought in the English language. It is a provocative engagement with the German philosopher's complex and elusive ideas, enhanced by a style that reverberates with a verve and dynamism approaching Nietzsche's own. Mencken presents a view of Nietzsche that elucidates the latter's complex and contentious form of the "gospel of individualism" while evincing a keen appreciation of his unrivalled capacity for critical analysis. The historical scope of Nietzsche's thought is fully evident in Mencken's analysis as is its application to modern societies and politics. In tracing the biographical and intellectual impetus for Nietzsche's relentless attacks on conventional moralities and established modes of thought, Mencken discerned both an ideal and a method for grappling with social and cultural issues that remain salient in our own time.

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Page Count

323

Publisher

Routledge

Published Date

ISBN 10

135151900X

ISBN 13

9781351519007

Prejudices

First Series

By: H. L. Mencken

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Prejudices

First Series

By: H. L. Mencken

Henry Louis Mencken (1880-1956), better known as H. L. Mencken, was a journalist, satirist, social critic, cynic, and freethinker, known as the "Sage of Baltimore." He is regarded as one of the most influential American writers of the early 20th century.

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252

Publisher

Wildside Press LLC

Published Date

ISBN 10

1434495973

ISBN 13

9781434495976

Mencken on Mencken

A New Collection of Autobiographical Writings

By: H. L. Mencken

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Mencken on Mencken

A New Collection of Autobiographical Writings

By: H. L. Mencken

Mencken weighs 172 pounds, is 5 feet 10 inches in height and not beautiful. His chief amusement, after reading, is piano-playing, this he does very crudely. He takes no exercise except walking and is a moderate eater and drinker. He sometimes drinks as little as one bottle of beer a week, though this doesn't happen very often." So wrote H. L. Mencken about himself, in a brief sketch of his life penned in 1905. Perhaps America's foremost literary stylist and most mordant wit, Mencken's most engaging writing told about his own life and experiences. In Mencken on Mencken, veteran Mencken editor and scholar S. T. Joshi has assembled a hefty collection of the best of Mencken's autobiographical pieces that have not appeared previously in book form. These forty-four selections cover a wide variety of topics ranging from incidents from Mencken's everyday life to reflections on friends and colleagues to his careers as author, journalist, and editor, to his travels abroad. As a journalist in Baltimore, Mencken encountered many unusual characters: a professional mourner hired by a beer distiller, a wagon driver who slept through the great Baltimore fire of 1904, a confirmed bachelor who left town to avoid the clutches of a predatory widow. He provides accounts of literary figures he knew, such as Theodore Dreiser, and ruminations on his work at the Baltimore Sun and as editor for the magazines Smart Set and the American Mercury. In an essay titled "What I Believe," he eschews humor and writes straightforwardly of his longtime scorn for the idea of religion, and in his journalist mode he reflects on a half-century of attending political conventions, drawing on his vast inside knowledge to savage the corruption and incompetence of the political class. A superb travel writer, Mencken gives us a rollicking account of beer-drinking in Munich, astute observations of political unrest in Cuba, and carefully drawn scenes from a long tour he and his wife made of the Mediterranean in 1934. Joshi has thoroughly annotated the pieces and also compiled an extensive glossary of names and terms that Mencken mentions. Mencken on Mencken offers a fully rounded self-portrait of one of America's most colorful personalities and most extraordinary men of letters.

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