Description

A towering figure on the American cultural landscape, H.L. Mencken stands out as one of our most influential stylists and fearless iconoclasts--the twentieth century's greatest newspaper journalist, a famous wit, and a constant figure of controversy.
Marion Elizabeth Rodgers has written the definitive biography of Mencken, the finest book ever published about this giant of American letters. Rodgers illuminates both the public and the private man, covering the many love affairs, his happy marriage at the age of 50 to Sara Haardt, and his complicated but stimulating friendship with the famed theater critic George Jean Nathan. Rodgers vividly recreates Mencken's era: the glittering tapestry of turn-of-the-century America, the roaring twenties, depressed thirties, and the home front during World War II. But the heart of the book is Mencken. When few dared to shatter complacencies, Mencken fought for civil liberties and free speech, playing a prominent role in the Scope's Monkey Trial, battling against press censorship, and exposing pious frauds and empty uplift. The champion of our tongue in The American Language , Mencken also played a pivotal role in defining American letters through The Smart Set and The American Mercury , magazines that introduced such writers as James Joyce, F. Scott Fitzgerald, and Langston Hughes.
Drawing on research in more than sixty archives including private collections in the United States and in Germany, previously unseen, on exclusive interviews with Mencken's friends, and on his love letters and FBI files, here is the full portrait of one of America's most colorful and influential men.

"This biography, the best ever on the sage of Baltimore, is exhaustive but never exhausting, and offers readers more than moderate intelligence and an awfully good time."
--Martin Nolan, Boston Globe

Reviews

"The most superb and entertaining biography (in any field) that I've read in years, one that has 'National Book Award' stamped all over it."--Joseph Goulden, Washington Times

"Rodgers tells all with considerable verve.... She's certainly covered Mencken's extraordinarily complex life with exemplary thoroughness, sympathy and honesty, and more than a little wit."--Baltimore Sun

"A superb study of the life of the cigar-chomping controversialist, civil libertarian and muckraker who remains the patron saint of journalists, at least of a certain age.... The best biography of Mencken to date."--Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

"A biography that stands out in a crowded field because of her exhaustive research and her deft touch as a writer.... Rodgers manages to make her mark amid all this competition because, among those who have sought to provide a comprehensive, scholarly examination of Mencken's life, she is by far the most capable storyteller. The extent of her research is phenomenal...but she is never overwhelmed by her material. Rather, she is able to weave all these intricate details into a narrative that enables readers to see how this extraordinary life unfolded in real time.... Rodgers' life of Mencken is memorable and engaging...she now stands with the best of the great journalist's biographers." --San Francisco Chronicle

"H.L. Mencken--Henry to his friends--has always been a hard nut to crack. Now Marion Elizabeth Rodgers has, for once and for all, just about done it.... In clear and forceful prose he would have approved of, Rodgers gives Mencken his 1ightful place in American literature and life. Her book is...captivating."--Anthony Day, Los Angeles Times

"A fine piece of work."--Seattle Times

"Definitive.... The last word on perhaps the most famous newspaper man of the 20th century."--Bloomsberg News

Product Details

672 pages; 86 halftones & line illus.; 6-1/8 x 9-1/4; ISBN13: 978-0-19-533129-5ISBN10: 0-19-533129-X

About the Author(s)