Few writers roiled the American cultural scene like Henry Louis Mencken. Pathbreaking journalist, trenchant social observer, and unbridled humorist, Mencken was the most provocative and influential cultural critic of the last century. To read him today is to be plunged into an era whose culture wars were easily as ferocious as our own, in the company of a writer of boundless curiosity and vivacious frankness. In the six volumes of Prejudices published between 1919 and 1927, Mencken attacked what he felt to be American provincialism and hypocrisy, and championed writers and thinkers he saw as harbingers of a new candor and maturity. Laced with savage humor and delighting in verbal play, Mencken's prose remains a one-of-a-kind roller coaster ride over a staggering range of thematic territory: literature and journalism, politics and religion, sex and marriage, food and drink, music and painting, the absurdities of Prohibition and the dismal state of American higher education, and the relative merits of Baltimore and New York. Now, The Library of America restores the full text of Mencken's landmark work to print in a deluxe two- volume boxed set, ensuring that new generations of readers can rediscover his one-of-a-kind genius.
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20 of 21 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Mencken rocks!,
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This review is from: H.L. Mencken: Prejudices: The Complete Series (Library of America) (Hardcover)
Not much more can be said about Mencken that Kevin didn't cover in his review. This two volume set replaces a "selected" version that I had in my Mencken collection. I will pass the selected version along to a friend. Mencken is a true word smith in the highest order. He has a way of presenting things that has me rolling on the floor in laughter, pounding my fists on my armchair in anger and shaking my head in disbelief as he exposes tedious frauds, ignoramuses, cheap rouges, hypocrites, and other grasping, selfish, dishonest mammals that are hell-bent on robbing us of the fruit or our labors. For those who aren't familiar with Mencken, I highly recommend this set.
3 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Excellent companions,
By James D. Crabtree "Doc Crabtree" (Fort Leavenworth, Kansas) - See all my reviews (VINE VOICE) (REAL NAME)
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This review is from: H.L. Mencken: Prejudices: The Complete Series (Library of America) (Hardcover)
I was largely unfamiliar with Mencken's writings until recently but I decided to take a chance on these two volumes. How lucky I am that I did! These essays are wonderful. H.L. Mencken is a writer I can enjoy without feeling he is talking down to me... intelligent and witty discourse makes his Prejudices a engaging and educational at once. Even the format is perfect... well-bound and small, but not paperback-sized. I will be enjoying these for many years to come.
2 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
A man of sharp words that still can cut,
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This review is from: H.L. Mencken: Prejudices: The Complete Series (Library of America) (Hardcover)
Being familiar with events in early 20th Century America will help in grasping the insights that Mencken delivers. His words reveal the true cynic. He is not gentle with many and he can truly wound those he reviews, literary and political and educational. Read it and laugh. Read it and weep over the loud and abrasive contemporary media personalities. Mencken would cut deeper in excising the tumors of nonsense than all the shouting and ranting and raving of our contemporary idiots. Worth reading.
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