If you've already got both of Mencken's Chrestomathies, his Prejudices series, Newspaper Days, Heathen Days, Treatise on the Gods, and The American Language, this book will be mostly gratuitous. Otherwise, it's a good collection of his opinions, and opinionated he certainly was. It also includes his introduction to The American Democrat by James Fenimore Cooper, various magazine articles (including two published just before his stroke), and some previously unpublished letters.

The major value in Mencken's writings is that he thought outside of the mainstream. I share his views more often than not, but even when I disagree with him, he makes me think.

If not for Mencken's absurd racial theories (sadly common at that time)hovering in the background, this would get five stars. Conversely, there are many witty, incisive aspects to his criticism on display in Smart Set, which is also richly represented in the more comprehensive Mencken Chrestomathy. Smart Set is an interesting historical document. Unfortunately, many of his political criticisms remain applicable to today's buncombe peddlers. He was not afraid to challenge the establishment of his time. Availability of an unabridged dictionary, along with a sense of humor, adds to the enrichment.

From Ungie Hornblower to nomination for the vice presidency, Mencken serves up autobiographical shorts that'll make you howl. Though he lived on Hollins Street for most of his life, his stories paint a full picture of "Charm City" from 1890-1936 (at least from the eyes of the most feared and respected critic of the time).

Editor Jonathan Yardley notes that in 1920s Mencken "towered over the American scene as has no literary or journalistic figure before or since." That's a significant story, parts of which are found in these pages.

This volume covers the time from Mencken's apprenticeship to when he and George Nathan founded and edited the influential American Mercury magazine. During the last eight years of his life, Mencken wrote this memoir "as a personal curriculum vitae" and as a part of American literary history "for the use of resurrection men in the years to come."

Because of the stroke he suffered, the notes went unfinished. His will stipulated to a library in his native Baltimore that they remain sealed until 1980 or 35 years after his death. In 1991 the seals were broken and this book was published soon after.

Mencken and Nathan published and, in some cases, introduced to the world an impressive list of writers, including Dreiser, Cather, Pound, Fitzgerald, O'Neill, Anderson, Lewis, and Masters. These were some of the major writers of the period and are proof of Mencken's ability to discover and promote literary talent. The occasionally trying encounters with Dreiser, Fitzgerald, and Lewis prove that the curmudgeon of American letters also had a certain amount of patience and compassion for those whose work he believed in.

Even after all this time, we still feel the impact of H. L. Mencken's arrival on the literary scene in the opening years of the 20th century. He wrote millions of words, and has been the subject of many biographies. Despite all the ink spilled by and about him, the fragmentary nature of his autobiographical works still strikes one as a tragedy. He began keeping a diary from the mid-Thirties, when he was over fifty, and his career-ending stroke cut this autobiography off just before he started writing about his glory years of the Twenties.

It's a pity, certainly, but editor Jonathan Yardley has done a splendid job editing the manuscript down to this book. Yardley succeeded in accomplishing his goal, to "let Mencken be Mencken" and to keep himself in the background. One approvingly contrasts this style of editing with David Cairns well-researched but fussily-footnoted _Memoirs of Hector Berlioz_.

So, we have Mencken's own account of the beginnings of his career, and his encounters with publishers, editors, poets, writers, and other notables of the 1910s. The only person who gets treated as an equal is his partner at _The Smart Set_ magazine, George Jean Nathan. Most everyone else has their weaknesses and strengths--if they have any strengths in his eyes--baldly and succinctly described. We meet the then up-and-coming Theodore Dreiser, Edgar Lee Masters, and Ezra Pound, to mention a few. Mencken gives us some flash-forwards every now and then--we see Pound as a raving brownshirt in the Thirties, demanding to be published in Mencken's magazine. Mencken prints the text of the withering reply he sent back.

Mencken's tone can be off-putting for a neutral reader. He frequently comes across as suaver-than-thou, unconned and unconnable. But most likely only people who already love Mencken will read this anyway, so they will enjoy themselves nonetheless. And he is very funny in some vignettes. Read the one where he and Nathan pretend to be interested in a tramp poet's tour of Greenwich Village.

There are two paragraphs early on in the book which may serve as the thesis statement for his whole life and career. In them, he describes how he was never attracted to religion or its secular imitations, nor ever considered himself a tool of the plutocracy. And indeed, a review of his output does show that he fell into his distinctively cynical style very early in his career, and never seemed to find cause to depart from it. In this biography he relates his activities and his reasons for them with very few emotional asides. Like a speakeasy gin-and-tonic, this is astringent stuff--but it hits the spot.

Terry Teachout's new biography is largely a rehash of Fred Hobson's biography of Mencken and to complete the feeling of déjà vu, the same controversies that greeted Hobson's book swirl around this one as well. Unlike Lord Byron or de Sade, Mencken led a life that was fairly bourgeois and apparently book reviewers resent it, thus playing up his alleged anti-Semitism. It is something of a fad these days to unmask literary anti-Semites and those who do it sometimes make themselves look foolish. One dunce who reviewed this book for the Seattle Times and compared Mencken unfavorably to Voltaire was apparently unaware of a large body of criticism condemning Voltaire for his anti-Semitism. Teachout himself is apologetic about Mencken's attitudes to the Jews, but doesn't go far enough in pardoning him.

Part of the demonizing of Mencken these days might be attributed to the fact that American society is still intolerant of a critical attitude to religion. Mencken was indeed critical of Judaism. However, as readers of "Treatise on Gods" know, Mencken was also critical of Christianity and Islam. A rationalist to the core, Mencken had little time for people who believed in the supernatural. He detested the religious impulse in Christians, Jews and Muslims alike.

As for those who claim that Mencken is racially prejudice against the Jews, they will have to explain away the fact that, as Teachout shows, Mencken had many close Jewish friends and that he used harsh language toward everyone (the English, the Irish, African-Americans, Italians), not just against the Jews.

As so often with the genteel, the critics of Mencken have focused almost entirely on his manner of writing than rather than the substance of his writing. He argued quite forcefully for a humane foreign policy. Unlike the timid Walter Lippman, Mencken urged the US government to take in Jewish refugees from Nazi Germany. For a man who is so often characterized as nasty, he was surprisingly pacific in some of his politics: he was against participation in both world wars.

Much has been made about Teachout's use of Mencken's unpublished writings for this biography and many reviewers have implied that these writings reveal his dark side. Actually, these unpublished writings appear to reveal some new facts, not new prejudices. If Mencken said nasty things in the diaries, a look at his published writings will show that he was nasty there as well. By the way, he could also be nice sometimes too. Again it's just that Mencken's style is far more biting than anything allowed in today's journalism, which is apparently stocked with aspiring political consultants and public relations people.

The best account of the events of Mencken's life is still his Days books (Happy Days, Newspaper Days, Heathen Days). The collection of his newspaper columns, The Impossible Mencken, is better reading than this biography and a good record of Mencken's opinions on the issues of the day.

Terry Teachout is one of the most reliable, readable and fair-minded conservative journalists and critics we have. "The Skeptic" is his long-awaited biography of H.L. Mencken, perhaps the most important American journalist of the first half of the 20th century and a huge influence on modern conservativism. This book is relatively compact and briskly-paced, which sets it apart from most modern biographies. But it doesn't leave anything important out; if you want to read just one book about Mencken, this is probably it (although once you are exposed to the guy, you almost certainly won't want to stop at one.) Walter Lippman said that Mencken "calls you a swine and and imbecile, and increases your will to live." That's the secret of Mencken's appeal; what Teachout calls an "18th century force and candor and rationality" wrapped in a rollicking comic prose that is absolutely unforgettable. During the 1920's, he was almost worshipped as a cultural deity in America because of his stylistic greatness. And in the world of ideas, Mencken could be thought of as a founder of today's libertarianism. But Teachout is clear-eyed enough to see the man's foibles as well as his many virtues. There was the postumously notorious anti-Semitism, which also caused Mencken to seriously underestimate Hitler. (During and after World War II Mencken kept a public silence about these subjects; I think feelings of embarrassment might have played a role.) Mencken was oblivious to the burgeoning artistic Modernism of the 20's; Hemingway, Faulkner, jazz, and Frank Lloyd Wright were beyond his comprehension. And he could be a bigot and a bully. "In Memoriam: W.J.B", his brilliant obituary of William Jennings Bryan is one of the greatest pieces of invective ever. But Mencken never realized his malice and close-mindedness became every bit as great as Bryan's was. And in his high-handed dismissal of religion he didn't see that there was more than one way to be a Puritan: he was one about his atheism and radical skepticism. But Teachout restores Mencken to his rightful place as not merely a gifted comic writer, but a serious (if flawed) thinker on ideas that are still very relevant.

Terry Teachout's new book about H.L. Mencken is a revelation, largely because it is no mere hagiography; nor does it attempt to smear Mencken as a one-dimensional bigot. Instead, Teachout admits that while yes, Mencken was anti-Semetic, often petty, and sometimes out of touch (especially from about 1935 on), he was also a brilliant writer, master critic, and unparalleled wit in the Mark Twain tradition. Teachout provides a nice balance of the personal and the public man (using previously unpublished letters and journal entries) so that it is often the case that Mencken's own words indict him (rather than the P.C. crowd taking things out of context). What we are left with is a man still worthy of admiration (at the very least, for a journalistic style that is unrivaled), but one who deserves to be further scrutinized for his contradictions. Bravo, Teachout, for giving us a living, breathing Mencken rather than a caricature.

Those who have read Mencken extensively might find this biography a bit tame. Those who have feasted on Manchester's rich accounts of the lives of such people as Winston Churchill and Douglas MacArthur will wonder why this seems so flat in comparison. Still, "Disturber of the Peace" is both a valuable and an immensely readable book. In its few pages (compared with the three volumes on Churchill), the young William Manchester gives a concise but thorough account of Mencken and a thoughtful assessment of the man's importance during his own era and today. It's a pity this book is out of print.

Although the story line of this book is Pres. Harding's administration in the early 1920s, there is a relevance to today's presidential political scene. For example, Harding engaged in illicit sexual affairs which the author exemplifies by Harding's "jollying" of a young women in a White House broom closet. Pres. Clinton did his in the oval office. Also Harding was not one of this nation's most intelligent presidents. And in the current presidential election there is a question about the intelligence of one of the candidates. The author chose a real person,H. L. Mencken to conduct a fictionalized investigation of the corruption in Harding's administraion. The author also tries to depict Mencken as he revealed himself in his writings and as he was depicted in his biographies. Mencken, perhaps the nation's most famous iconoclast who had an opinion on everything in American society, relishes his role in this book of observing and commenting on the morons and clowns in Harding's administration known as the "Ohio Gang" who Harding brought with him to Washington. They are also real people who appear in the book. Harding's attorney general was tried twice for his misdeeds. His secretary of the interior and his director of the the Veterans Bureau were imprisoned. Mencken is paired with another real person, James Cain, who is best know for his hard-boiled crime fiction. This duo takes the reader on an entertaining tour of Harding's corrupt Washington. And along the way readers will meet such literary notables as Henry Luce and Sinclair Lewis. There is also a fictionalized sexual affair by Cain and a real woman who was the darling of the Washington press corp when she testified in real life against Harding's attorney general at a senate hearing. The entertaining part of this novel are Mencken's conversatins which permeate the book

This book is a collection of the private letters between Henry Louis Mencken and Sara Haardt during their long courtship. In these letters, one will find much that will interest the Mencken fan, but little of much true interest. There is no dirt to be had here, just the reflections of a couple of people who are very fond of each other and very fond of writing. One may gain an insight into the times in which they live and the hardships of Prohibition and of life in the 1920's in general, but a thorough reading of Mencken's other works is far more revealing.