Newspaper Days, 1899-1906 : Volume 2 of Mencken's Autobiography

Writing Los Angeles: A Literary Anthology (Library of America)

Los Angeles has always been a place of paradisal promise and apocalyptic undercurrents. Simone de Beauvoir saw a kaleidoscopic "hall of mirrors," Aldous Huxley a "city of dreadful joy." Jack Kerouac found a "huge desert encampment," David Thomson imagined

A Mencken Chrestomathy

To read H. L. Mencken is to be confronted with the sad realization that most of what we find in newspapers and journals today is mere sludge. While an Alexander Cockburn or a Christopher Hitchens can churn out a brilliant, at times almost sublime piece of

The Vintage Mencken

The anthology that spans an entire lifetime of writing by America's greatest curmudgeon, with a "flick of mischief on nearly every page."

A Religious Orgy in Tennessee: A Reporter's Account of the Scopes Monkey Trial

"The native American Voltaire, the enemy of all puritans, the heretic in the Sunday school, the one-man demolition crew of the genteel tradition." -Alistair Cooke on H.L. MenckenFiercely intelligent, scathingly honest, and hysterically funny, H.L. Mencken

H.L. Mencken on Religion

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, whi

In Defense Of Women

Originally published in 1922, this book considers topics that remain of vital interest to today's readers, including monogamy and polygamy, prostitution, the double standard, sexual harassment, and declining birth and marriage rates. Written in Mencken's

A Second Mencken Chrestomathy

This Wonderful Sequel to the best-selling A Mencken Chrestomathy of nearly half a century ago is full of the iconoclastic common sense that marked H. L. Mencken's astonishing career as the premier American social critic of the twentieth century. Gathered

The Philosophy of Friedrich Nietzsche

The first book on Nietzsche ever to appear in English, this examination by legendary journalist H. L. Mencken is still one of the most enlightening. Mencken wrote this book while still in his 20s, but his penchant for thoroughness was evident even at that

Heathen Days: Mencken's Autobiography: 1890-1936

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 T