Showing results by author "H L Mencken" in All Categories

Edited and annotated by H. L. M., this is a selection from his out-of-print writings. They come mostly from books - the six installments of the Prejudices series, A Book of Burlesques, In Defense of Women, Notes on Democracy, Making a President, A Book of Calumny, Treatise on Right and Wrong - but there are also magazine and newspaper pieces that never got between covers (from the American Mercury, the Smart Set, and the Baltimore Evening Sun) and some notes that were never previously published at all.

Originally published in 1922, this book considers topics that remain of vital interest to today’s readers, including monogamy and polygamy, the double standard, sexual harassment, and declining marriage rates. Written in Mencken’s characteristic no-nonsense manner, In Defense of Women crackles with controversy and caustic wit.

American author, scholar, and satirist H.L. Mencken wrote The American Language in 1919, intending to defend American speech from prescriptivist critics. "America itself is unutterably vulgar. But vulgarity, after all, means no more than a yielding to natural impulses in the face of conventional inhibitions, and that yielding to natural impulses is at the heart of all healthy language-making." 

This audiobook contains three selected essays from around 1918 that focus on the ethical issues of newspaper journalism. It provides a fascinating glimpse into ethical issues that still confront us a century later.

This is a judicious selection of H. L. Mencken's insightful and witty observations, which were written and published before 1923. Mencken popularized Nietzche in America and was not shy or hesitant in pointing out the ironies and contradictions of American life. Brilliant, controversial, and acerbic. Mencken was a thinker before his time when it came to the conflict between religion and science.