Vintage Mencken Author:H. L. Mencken and Alistair Cooke From the back cover: — In the 1920’s the initials HLM were as celebrated in the United States as GBS in Britain. Mencken was the Daniel come to judgment, in an opulent and easygoing time, on the fatty degeneration of American idealism. — His success was enormous, and because he was over praised for the wrong things, there was soon in eager attenda... more »nce a band of critics (many of whom are unfit to punctuate his copy) waiting to debunk the great debunker and prop¬agate the now fashionable notion that he was a mounte¬bank who died with the dodo.
Alistair Cooke has put together this wholly new [1955] anthology, in its author's seventy-fifth year, as evidence of his belief that Mencken remains, on the contrary, one of the great American humorists and "the master craftsman of daily journalism in the twentieth century."
This collection is meant therefore to revive the oldsters, and acquaint the youngsters, with the glory that was Mencken.« less