This is a collection of Mencken's newspaper columns from the early 1900s to his very last column written in November 1948. Some of the columns are only prototypes of larger works on the American language and contemporary literature and a few of them, such as the piece on Valentino, were re-written and enlarged by Mencken for books like "A Mencken Chrestomathy." Despite this, Mencken is interesting throughout the book, especially on politics and travel.

In his career, Mencken attended almost all of the Democratic and Republican conventions for president and perhaps because his reports were written before television, they are much more evocative than anything written today. He notices what the delegates were wearing, what music was playing, what sort of intrigues were being plotted behind closed doors. Mencken downplayed his skills as a reporter; he claimed that he never got a scoop in his career. What makes his writing worth reading is a sense of humor and his opinionated voice. His readiness to call someone a "moron" can be tiring at times, but he is refreshingly blunt compared to today's political commentators. He is probably best on Harding and Coolidge; worse on Franklin Roosevelt, who inspires anti-New Deal harangues.

Mencken claimed that he had from an early age made up his mind on every conceivable subject, yet his opinions seem far less predicable and less readymade than anything in today's newspapers. In one of his columns, he reports on a 1928 Ku Klux Klan march on Washington D.C. The purpose of the Klan "is organizing inferiorities into a mystical superiority" and he writes that it is impossible to look on the robed and jeweled Klansmen "without snickering." He notes that the Klan members are clearly from the lower economic stratum and "that these poor folks are exploited by rogues is an unpleasant detail, but certainly nothing new in the world." In one column, Mencken is able to make the Klan ridiculous and place their significance in a larger context without becoming shrill.

These days Mencken is routinely attacked for using slang words to describe ethnic groups in terms now considered to be unacceptable. He did write to provoke people and, judging by his diaries, Mencken could be pretty callous. However, as Gore Vidal writes in the introduction, public action is what counts more than anything else. There are a lot of examples here of a writer who could take decent stands on the issues of the day and who believed in fair play. In one column, he calls for the end of "The Lynching Psychosis;" in another, he laments the US persecution of two radicals; in another, he calls for the US government to admit a larger number of the Jewish victims of Nazi terror. Throughout his career, Mencken believed that the United States had no business interfering in the affairs of other countries and should never get involved in foreign wars. Compare this attitude to that of the contemporary editorial writer who blanches at an ethnic slur, but enthusiastically calls for bomb strikes on Iraq, Afghanistan, Kosovo, etc. A thoughtful reader might decide that Mencken was more humane than today's Christopher Hitchens' or Thomas Friedman's.

This book has a provocative introduction written by Gore Vidal, which was the source of a literary spat between him and John Updike. In a review of this book collected in "More Matter," Updike writes sniffily about Mencken's lack of sympathy for people unlike himself and about Vidal's "sneering" introduction. In a response published in "The Last Empire," Vidal attacks Updike for simplistic patriotism and for signing on to the US war in Viet Nam. (An example of the genteel warrior that Mencken hated?) That Mencken could inspire a literary feud almost fifty years after his death is a testimonial of sorts.

brutally honest, rude, raw, and frightfully truthful, this is the best collection yet of America's most insightful writer. A must for anyone who has been beaten down by our simpering, back-slapping, ridiculously oversensitive and P.C. media.

Almost 700 pages in length, this book provides the reader with examples of Mencken's best writing from various times in his life and is far broader in scope than any other anthology published to date. Of particular interest are his columns written from Dayton, Tennessee during the Scopes Monkey Trial. An added treat is the foreward by Gore Vidal

_Friedrich Nietzsche_ by noted early 20th century American journalist H. L. Mencken is a both a brief biography of Nietzsche as well as a basic outline of his philosophy. Nietzshe's biggest influence is easlily recognized as his predescessor in German pessimism, Schopenhauer, along with the ancient Greeks before Socrates. Nietzsche is criticized as being only a destructive force in his philosophy, merely tearing down the decadent Christian morality that reigned in the West during the 1800s. However, Nietzsche's ultimate goal was the "superman," men who were above morality, sentimentality, religion and the "mindless grazing herd of cows" that constituted most of humanity. Much of this book attacks Christianity, which Nietzsche abbhorred above all other things, and considered it a "slave-morality" derived from the Jews as opposed to the "master-morality" of the European aristocrats. The origin of morality, according to Nietzsche and derived from Schopenhauer, comes from a race's will to live, and this manifests itself in a the law codes, usually of divine origin, of any given tribe, ethnicity, social group, civilization, race or nation. Nietzsche differed from Schopenhauer in that he felt that a heroic life was the best life to lead, instead of giving up the will to live as Schopenhauer taught. Both Nietzsche and Schopenhauer rejected trying to live a "happy" life, realizing that true happiness is unnatainable. In some respects, Nietzsche is reminiscent of the religious prophets he hated so much--he does not believe in free will, that people are more or less determined in their ways by forces that are beyond individual control, but he still exhorts them to dust themselves off and better themselves anyway. As far as his views of marraige and women are concerned, they are very pessimistic yet grounded in reality. "Love" comes from physical desire, and marriage is the official sanctioning of it. The ultimate purpose of marraige should be to breed a better race of humans to attain the "superman" in the future. There are some areas where Nietzsche's thoughts went a little fantastic. One theory he propounded was that Christianity was created by the Jews to make the rest of the ancient world a "slave morality". This is ridiculous, as Mencken notes, however some Jewish scholars today like to credit their own people with Christianity's rise at the same time voicing their disgust towards Christianity itself. But Nietzsche predicted that in the future Jews would be the ones that would virtually rule the world and have the greatest amount of influence in the intellectual fields. Another of Nietzsche's offbeat ideas is the doctrine of "eternal reccurance," that time repeats itself in cycles from eternity to eternity and gives the heroic "superman" the same struggle (in which the superman glories in) forever. As far as Nietzsche's influece goes today in 21st century America: I would only conclude that it is partial. It is readily apparent from reading Menckens exgesis where Nietzsche influenced Nazism, libertarians, nihilists, right-wing anarchists, "Ayn Rand style" objectivism and Satanism. Nothing exists for racial improvement, eugenics or euthanasia that is propelling humanity upward. The racial policies and ideals in ascendancy today are extremely dysgenic instead. Some of Nietzsche's ideas which are more readily observabable are the rule by an elite that is above the law--an "Illuminati" of sorts--but it is not bringing the human race upward--it is sending it crashing down to hell. I do not personally agree with many of Nietzsche's ideas, especially his attack on Christianity, but this is a thought provoking book of the "mad prophet of Nihilism."

This is the most lucid and entertaining explanation of Nietzche's thought and life that I have ever encountered. Philosophical goobledygook is virtually absent and the essence of Nietzche's philosophy is accurately expounded in a no-nonsense style.

First published in 1907, this book is an extraordinary work by one of the great early 20th century American wordsmiths. The subject matter, the philosophical perspective outlined by the life's work of 19th century German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche, strikes me as one of the most important that modern man can hope to tackle. Mencken never talks down to the reader, yet this work is accessible to all. I highly recommend it to all men and women, but especially to students of philosophy and the social sciences

When we read this book some things come to our minds: 1-Nietzsche was the most courageous philosopher ever,just because he had courage of saying what was the truth, but most of people was not prepared to the impact. 2-The existence of god it is only based on the ignorance of primitive men in explain things which they was not capable of understand. 3-Jesus was as smart as most of priests of nowadays. 4-The winners have not lived in accordance to the principles of christianism,cause if they had, they would not have been winners.

I have red some reviews,and noticed people that are neither philosophers,experts nor intelligent ,daring to write things about a genius like NIETZSCHE,WITHOUT HAVE NEVER RED ANY WORK OF HIM . People do not know the context of this work. Nietzsche was a human lover ,he was the most concerned about the future of the mankind philosopher ever.Ignorant and dumb people judge him a misanthrope,it made me laugh. Please go to study more,and get smarter , before trying to read a superb work like that. Dumb people is low in getting rid of their dogmas.

Whether you agree with him or not, you gotta admit that Nietzsche had some very strong arguments about the validity of Christianity, and how he views it as a form of weakness posing as a strong institution. There is a section where he takes verses from the Bible itself and explains in a way on how it is evangelical and dictatorial. Nietzsche was a deep thinker, perhaps too deep because he got really sick shortly after this book, and he didn't seem like the type of guy to just ramble about a topic without knowing about it. Him quoting the Bible and many other religious texts porves that he well-researched Christianity and made enough valid points to defend his position on Christianity. I am not an antichrist myself, thoguh I more or less shun organized religion, but Nietzsche has some very thought-provoking concepts. Sure it is offensive to one devout to Christianity, and I'd probably be offended if I was a practicing Christian, but this is recommended for those who study religions and philosophy, or just a powerful book in general.

Before I begin, I would like to note that this review isn't meant to be something that focuses the wandering eye on the thoughts of many and many a philosophy class and its deductions. Instead, this is meant as a briefly conceived, introspective look into a work that I've had the pleasure of reading and am recommending to others in addition to earlier works that Nietzsche wrote. To me, it seems that people lose sight of the work itself in the dissection of the author and all the hidden connotations that are perhaps manifest within his works, and I hope that my commentary is received as something quickened by a different train-of-thought.

Frederick Nietzsche the philosopher and his little known cohort, Frederick Nietzsche the comedian, seem to work hand in hand very well in most of his works and especially in his earlier editions, providing ideas that seem stunning in many rights because of the timeframe they were written within and because of the subject matters they wished to assail. Biting with dry snippets of wit and underlying humor, not to mention a perspective that was especially unique at the turn of the 20th century, Nietzsche managed to find himself ignored by many theologians in his own time only to be deservedly uplifted in later decades because of his keen insights into matters that people would rather have ignored. This fact is evident each and every time one reads how he wantonly flaunted his beliefs in front of an audience, pointing out the inherent flaws in the belief system that he perceived as a waste of time and in the ideological principles that find themselves within his philosophical crosshairs.

Nietzsche the comedian took a backseat in this work, however, as he found himself focused upon something that filled his words with a seething, almost venomous, revile; that of a religious system he saw as corruptly based in both principle and in prophecy, unworthy of redemption in the thinking man's world. Still, as is oftentimes overlooked in many this work, it is the delivery system that the church itself adopted to further these trains of thought that is actually the vessel under assault here and not simply the philosophy itself, a fact denoted in a most scathing manner that takes ideas he presented in earlier volumes and furthering them. His commentary on men of the garb and on the ideals of "sin" and "forgiveness" support that assumption well, as do many other items covered herein, building a basis for the stones he casts with utter contempt again and again.

It is also mistakenly understood by many a person that Nietzsche himself was against the teachings of the Christ figure when, in fact, he seemed to fill certain points of the book with reverence for Christ, citing him as someone that would have been a challenge to debate with because only Christ would have been able to defend his words. It was the term Christian that he seemed to deplore and the church that was built upon its shoreline, attacking Paul and the foundations of the monolith beast as well as its hypocritical understanding of the unknown and the fear used to further it.

This is not to say that the book is without its flaws, because it is. There are statements that generalize and there are phrases that defame, but these are only portions of the piece and not the overall effect itself. This is also an angrier edition that is more straightforward and less of a work of prose, choosing to instead embrace the approach of a hammer and not as a dance of syllables. Personally I find that interesting, seeing the things that he had thought groundbreaking in their own right because they shed the fear of the metaphysical and the hatred harbored for anyone that spoke out against these things, holding up little tidbits of his life and his personal perceptions within them before a nation of naysayers. For this reason, I recommend this book as something to look into and enjoy, reading it only after other books have been first checked out.

H. L. Mencken was born in Baltimore in 1880 and for his developmental years was a "bookworm." He resolved to pursue a more active life as he grew and discovered his niche in journalism. In 1899 he went to work for the Baltimore Morning Herald and found the going difficult at first, but as he persisted he discovered that was where he was most suited and kept the title "newspaperman" the rest of his life. He remained in his home town and continued to live in the home his family had lived in rather than seeking career advancement in larger markets. One of the first essays in this collection is one he wrote about his hometown, "The Baltimore of the Eighties." Another early one describes the local YMCA. His piece on Theodore Dreiser contains a segment on the art of communicating via the written word. A tribute to William Jennings Bryan which was published in the American Mercury in 1925 is included in this collection. Other pieces are on the people, times, circumstances, and issues of the era in which he made his observations. While I do not agree with him on many topics, his work demonstrates the efforts of a skilled writer.

Mencken was a well known editor, book reviewer and writer. The selected essays are interesting and often very funny, but I somehow expected a more comprehensive and well-rounded selection of his writings. The book is certainly entertaining and sometimes insightful - hence a purchase to be considered. However, a better job could have been done in selecting the material for the book - including perhaps a selection of his famous aphorisms.

Please read this book for a refreshing view from a highly intelligent author from the early 20th century...Mencken was *not* a confirmed racist - this tag was applied to him when some of his personal diaries were published and his writings were compared against the current day "PC" language test. If you were to strike up a conversation with any person 90 years ago I would think their speech would shock modern sensibilities on the race issue. In Menckin's case, I encourage you to read about his actions in the race issue - the fact that as an editor he published African-American authors when no other mainstream publications would do so. That he opposed segregation and had many friends he actively and publicly supported that were of a diverse nature religiously and racially.

If you want a good weekend read with bookends from the beginning and the end of the twentieth century, pick up "The Vintage Mencken" and "Eat the Rich" or "Parliament of Whores" from P.J. O'Rourke, the current HL Mencken scholar at the Cato Institute. You will have a refreshing libertarian infusion which will help you withstand the current New Left and Religious Right babble that is so pervasive in the media these days.

Those hoping for an attack on mob rule and Andrew Jackson will be sorely disappointed; this 'treatise on Jacksonian democracy' is hardly a commentary on the current events of Cooper's age, and does not even mention Jackson. Rather, Cooper, spends more time discussing the merits of proper pronounciation than slavery! Further, for a polemic that greatly hurt its writer's reputation, the book is pretty weak and tame.

First published in 1838, The American Democrat is a wide-ranging series of essays, many of them couched in theoretical terms, about the historical and cultural bases of American democracy, and an informed critique of many aspects of American politics, society, and culture in the 1830s.. Cooper wrote the book shortly after returning to Jacksonian America after a seven-year sojourn in Europe, and it reflects much of his discontent with what he found. As a cogent and informed commentary on 19th Century America it belongs with a book with which it has often been compared -- Toqueville's Democracy in America.

Whereas, Alexis de Tocqueville offers his perspective on America as an outside observer, the literary genius James Fenimore Cooper offers his assessment of culture, politics and society in 19th century America. He doesn't hold democracy to be sacrosanct like we do today, but rather like any other system of government with its advantages and disadvantages. His look at the nature of liberty and its relation with equality is particularly intriguing.

He is cognizant of the dangers posed to American self-government, which values legal equality. Equality, is a virtue, only insofar as it pertains to equal rights and equality before the law. Any effort at establishing equality of outcome is tantamount to tyranny and opposed to liberty. Cooper illustrates the precarious relationship between liberty and equality. Unless, tradition, custom, the rule of law and the Constitution are revered and upheld- the American Polity could easily collapse into majoritarian tyranny under a demagogue.

One gains an appreciation of the system of government established by the American founding fathers after reading this book... They established a constitutionally-limited federal republic, with limits not only on the power of government, but with limits placed on the power of majority rule, so as to limit the fundamental role of government to protecting the rights of its citizens. This constitutional republic sought to balance out monarchial, democratic, and aristocratic elements...

The discovery of a "new" book of H. L. Mencken's writing is always a special pleasure for those of us who love the old grouch and his work. This particular book, however, is something of an oddity. Anyone who has read much Mencken will be familliar with the style; from the scurrilous asides he liked to sprinkle into his narratives. In his published writing they served as a condiment, adding a scandalous spice to accounts of Political Conventions and the like. Here they are the whole meal, and it can become something of a muchness.

The subtitle "The Whimsical Letters..." is somewhat misleading. Whimsy has overtones of gentility, like two little old ladies exchanging stories about the faries that live in their gardens. Here we have two old so and so's raking up scandal in the "Old Neighborhood"; indulging in vulgarity, innuendo, and (had the subjects of their discourse been real) slander.

Fans of Mencken (and, presumably, of Goodman) will probably enjoy the book, although it is not a new Newspaper Days or Prejudices. Non fans should probably avoid it until they are familliar with Mencken and his world. This is not a good introduction.

A beautiful book, nicely edited with notes so that you can get the obscure references, and funny--nay, uproarious--impromtu tall tales. Mencken and Goodman knowingly comment on the goings-on of all-too-human folk, with Olympian and sunlit wit and detachment. If you like to read Mencken, don't miss this one.

As a fan of H.L. Mencken--and perhaps one of the few people under thirty who has read "The American Language," "Treatise on the Gods," "Heliogabalus" and all five volumes of "Prejudices"--I am shocked and appalled at the lack of respect paid the great author by his biographer. Mr. Hobson didn't seem to undertake the arduous task of writing a biography on his subject due to a sincere respect or enthusiasm; rather, he seems to have been moved by the less noble motivation of "One-ups-manship"; for as a Baltimorean scribe who happened to be at the right place, at the right time--he was granted access to some of Mencken's hitherto guarded (and now recently released) documents by the executors of Mencken's estate. As a result, Hobson is at times needlessly peevish with his subject, naively judgmental and historically hypocritical. The last remark is born of a nausea grounded in a Politically Correct self-righteousness that the biographer displays when he all but waves his finger at ghosts from the past when, say--for instance--he notices that in a much different world people in the 1910s and 1920s used such racially insensitive phrases for "haggling" as "jewing one down". (SHOULD this be considered offensive? --Certainly.) But for anyone in the modern era who has uttered the phrase "gyped," perhaps eighty years from now some pompous pedant will lodge the ludicrous claim that this shows your hatred of "gypsies" (where in fact the term "gyped" comes from). No, I might hazard the assertion that most people who have used the phrase do not hold an irrational grudge against the Romany people. Rather, they use such phrases unthinkingly--bereft of an racial connotations. My point? --Yes, there were insensitive things about the past. But no more so than in the Present. And to trot out situations and customs--verbal or otherwise--without the benefit of a cultural context betrays both ignorance and malice. Mr. Hobson is shameful in his betrayal of that lowest of critical temptations: To lash out at one's betters. Perhaps if Mr. Hobson thinks that using the term "African American," instead of "black" is a badge of tolerance over and above that of Mencken, maybe he can back up his words with actions: For it was Mencken--not Hobson--who distinguished himself by aiding and promoting writers of the Harlem Renaissance and for his outstanding support of civil rights for both blacks and Jews. Perhaps Mr. Hobson has given as much of himself to the causes of helping others? --If not, then he needs to moderate his disrespectful attitude; for Mencken's actions speak louder than Hobson's words.

Despite some boring passages, Fred Hobson provides a generally interesting and thorough portrait of the original cynic, H.L.Mencken. The book addresses many issues of racism and anti semitism on Mencken's part fairly and openly. The novel is excellently written. I would have preferred more information on the Scope's Trial in relation to Mencken because my interest in Mencken was sparked when reading Inherit the Wind by Laurence and lee in which Mencken is satired as E.K.Hornbeck. Read this book- it is informative and excellent. My congratulations to Fred Hobson and Happy Reading

I have a much better time looking through some of the quote pages on the internet than through this book. It contains some good quotes but they are buried in a mass of really commonplace utterances.

This is not a new book, but it is loaded with great quotations, and they are well documented. It is subject- rather than author organized, which makes it easier to browse by topic, in my mind, making it more useful for someone seeking quotations for writing or speaking.

As a quotation book collector (see my other reviews) owning over 400 quote books, I'd rate this one in the top five percent. When I discovered my 1942 copy in a used bookstore and realized what a treasure trove of new material it contains (lots!-- over 1300 pages of smaller type. I estimate it contains at least 30,000 quotations,) it really made my day. There are only so many really great books which are delicious treats. So many are re-packagings of older ones. This book contains just a super batch of idea nuggets, collected by one of the brightest journalistic minds of the time.

Mencken basically took his quote collection and made it into a book which would supplement the popular books of the time-- Bartlett's, Hoyt and Stevenson. His stated goals were to date all the quotes and proverbs, leave out the fluff (platitudes), and add a lot more topics.

He comments, " Some immemorial imbecilities have been added deliberately , on the ground that it is just as interesting to note how foolish men have been as to note how wise they have been."

Now maybe it's just my read of him, but Mencken's choices reflect his acerbic wit.

I've been working too long on putting my own quotation book together, subject by subject (600+ done so far) and this is one book I always check out for both the unusual and unique thought and the most familiar ones, which he seems to nail very often. As a matter of fact, it is remarkable how often he does this.

It's been around along time, and so, unless it has been seriously updated, which I doubt, it is mostly good for more classic quotes. But it is excellent, and always a fun browse.

Since it's about the same price as the Burton Stevenson Home Book of Quotations, also called the MacMillan book of Maxims, Proverbs...... or something like that, it's not an easy choice between the two. This book spares you from some pretty sappy, bland and uninspiring stuff you'll find in the massive Stevenson book. But the Stevenson book is soooo much bigger that I'd probably pick it first, over just about any other quotation book. This book is certainly among the top ten though, for someone who wants a comprehensive quotation book library.

The day after the W inauguration, here's a line, from this book from Jefferson, That government is the strongest of which every man feels himself a part." Thomas Jefferson: Letter to H.D. Tiffin, 1807

Note the source and date. These are some of the nice features of this book.

Quick, name another newspaperman/critic/author from the Twenties who is a household name eighty years later. The answer is: We still have Mencken, so who cares!

It's amazing how H. L. Mencken's career as a wit and cynic has survived his mortal life. Every quotation book except the most insipidly sweet has a generous helping of his wit. His will specified that his diaries be published thirty years after his death, and his autobiography thirty-five years (IINM) from the same event. So, in the past decade and a half, we kept having these time-delayed literary stink-bombs going off, causing as much uproar among the present-day Sensitivity Commissars as his stuff did among the more conventionally upright in his time. And then prime material like in this book has been lying in closets, forgotten, for decades.

This book was compiled from a sheaf of manuscript that Mencken had been working on, intending for a sequel to _A Mencken Chrestomathy_, when he was incapacitated by his career-ending stroke. This material is not floor sweepings, as might be feared with a posthumous sequel consisting of diverse material from a considerable range of time. _A Second Mencken Chrestomathy_ is as rich a feast of Henry Louis' output as could be imagined. Much of it had been through Mencken's revision process: a piece would originally appear in the newspaper, then HLM would spiff it up for one of his _Prejudices_ collections, then it would get a going over for inclusion in the _Chrestomathy_. Editor Terry Teachout has done a great job boiling the results down to the present tome.

By most accounts, Mencken was a kind and generous man. So the arrogance bordering on misanthropy towards his fellow Americans on display here makes for unsettling reading. As much as one wants to laugh along at his deprecations of Congressmen, mobs, and professors, one knows that one's own turn on the dunking platform is coming. In my case, it's the South, which, intellectually speaking, according to HLM, barely exists. Ouch!

Unlike a critic like, say, Randall Jarrell, Mencken didn't try or pretend to be anything other than a critic, his language book and some poetic juvenalia aside. Instead, he poured quite a lot of creative energy into his criticism--in some especially vinegary pieces here, the words practically curdle on the page. He was a Libertarian at bottom, convinced of the mindlessness of the populace at large, the rascality of the elected officials, the wrong-headedness of any kind of professional uplifters--and yet seemingly peace with himself and the world, and quite happy to be here to see the show. Times changed, and he fell out of vogue with educated types. In the Twenties his libertarian instincts set him in opposition to Prohibitionists and Gantry-ish clergy. But in the Thirties the same instincts caused him to pish-tosh Marxists and other social engineers--and suddenly he was alone, as Marxism had quite carried the field of upper-class American intellectuals. (Read Sidney Hook's _Out of Step: An Unquiet Life in the Twentieth Century_, for more of that aspect of that era.)

His literary criticism passed through the same prism. In this collection, he damns with faint praise _The Grapes of Wrath_, for Steinbeck's depiction of the Joads' being the victims of anything other than their own inferiority. And he praises _Ethan Frome_ for its depiction of the utter joylessness of the New England peasantry. In music criticism, German music was the high-water mark. In political reporting, democracy was a circus run from the monkey cage. In such a long, public, and highly outspoken career, there were of course errors of more than just tact. He judged the onset of the Second World War by the experience of the First--indeed, his pride in his German heritage made him more wrong than he might have been. Disbelieving in goodness, he never perceived Hitler's unique evil.

But all this is a matter of record. If you love Mencken but have missed this collection, you'll want to lock yourself in your room with it for a week at least.

I highly recommend this book to anyone who admire's the genius of H.L. Mencken. Manchester has created an in-depth account of the "Lion of the Twenties," from his early childhood in Baltimore as the son of a German-American cigar company owner, to his acendence to the pinnacle of the American intellectual renaissance of the 1920's. Manchester sculpts a palpable and staunch profile of the self-described "conservative anarchist," who made his mark as the editor of the influencial American Mercury magazine, writer/editor for the Baltimore Sun, and author of The American Language, the penultimate chronicle of American English. Mencken was a prolific pundit, scholar, social critic, reader and writer, blessed with a caustic wit, a hair-trigger mind, and an impossibly contrarian nature. His voracity for reading was so deep that he was known to read a motor repair manual "just because it was another human being trying to communicate." No one escaped his crticism with socialists, Christian Fundamentalists, and politicians particularly targeted. Manchester's writing, as in all his excellent works (I also highly recommend "Goodbye Darkness," Manchester's memoir of his combat service in the South Pacific as a U.S. Marine in WWII, five stars)is wonderfully rich. Manchester's style also has a lot of Mencken in it, which is another reason I liked the book. I don't know if he was consciously attempting to pay homage through stylistic similarities, but the cadence, language and were reminiscent of Mencken's works, and gave me the feeling it was really Mencken telling his life story through the hand of Manchester. Not a bad guy to emulate, even when you're as good as Manchester.