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The Skeptic A Life of H. L. Mencken
by Teachout, Terry
- Used
- Hardcover
- first
- Condition
- Very Good in Very Good dust jacket
- ISBN 10
- 0060505281
- ISBN 13
- 9780060505288
- Seller
-
Bishop, California, United States
Payment Methods Accepted
About This Item
HarperCollins. Very Good in Very Good dust jacket. 2002. First Edition. Hardcover. 0060505281 . Stated first edition hardcover with tight binding and clean pages. Very good dust jacket with minimal shelf wear to edges and corners of covers and spine. Dust jacket is protected in mylar. ; 1.9 x 9.4 x 6.6 Inches; <p>When H. L. Mencken talked, everyone listened -- like it or not. In the Roaring Twenties, he was the one critic who mattered, the champion of a generation of plain-speaking writers who redefined the American novel, and the ax-swinging scourge of the know-nothing, go-getting middle-class philistines whom he dubbed the "booboisie." Some loved him, others loathed him, but everybody read him. Now Terry Teachout takes on the man Edmund Wilson called "our greatest practicing literary journalist," brilliantly capturing all of Mercken's energy and erudition, passion and paradoxes, in a masterful biography of this iconoclastic figure and the world he shaped.</p><p>From his carefree days as a teenage cub reporter in turn-of-the-century Baltimore to his noisy tenure as founding editor of the <i>American Mercury,</i> the most influential magazine of the twenties, Mencken distinguished himself with a contrary spirit, a razor-sharp wit (he coined the term "Bible Belt"), and a keen eye for such up-and-coming authors as Theodore Dreiser, Sinclair Lewis, Willa Cather, and F. Scott Fitzgerald. He covered everything, from the Scopes evolution trial to the 1948 presidential elections, in the pages of the Baltimore <i>Sun.</i> He wrote bestselling books about the failure of democracy, the foibles of the female sex, and what he memorably called "the American language." But his favorite topic was the one he saw wherever he looked: the sterile, life-denying strain of puritanism that he believed was strangling the culture of his native land.</p><p>No modern writer has been more controversial than H. L. Mencken. His fans saw him as the fearless leader of the endless battle against ignorance and hypocrisy, while his enemies dismissed him as a cantankerous, self-righteous ideologue. The surging popularity of Franklin D. Roosevelt, the politician he hated most, eventually caused his star to fade, but the unsparing vigor of his critique of American life and letters -- and the raucously colloquial prose style in which he blasted the Babbitts -- retains its freshness and relevance to this day.</p><p>Himself an accomplished critic and journalist, Terry Teachout has combed through reams of Mencken's private papers, including the searingly candid autobiographical manuscripts sealed after his death in 1956. Out of this material he has fashioned a portrait of the artist as intellectual gadfly, working newspaperman, devoted husband, and faithless ]over. Meticulously researched, elegantly written, and completely absorbing, <i>The Skeptic</i> vividly evokes the life and legacy of a true American legend.</p> .
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Details
- Bookseller
- Range & River Books (US)
- Bookseller's Inventory #
- 31209
- Title
- The Skeptic A Life of H. L. Mencken
- Author
- Teachout, Terry
- Format/Binding
- Hardcover
- Book Condition
- Used - Very Good in Very Good dust jacket
- Edition
- First Edition
- ISBN 10
- 0060505281
- ISBN 13
- 9780060505288
- Publisher
- HarperCollins
- Place of Publication
- New York
- Date Published
- 2002
- Keywords
- 0060505281, Biography, First Edition, H. L. Mencken, Henry Louis Mencken, JOURNALISTS
Terms of Sale
Range & River Books
30 day return guarantee, with full refund including shipping costs for up to 30 days after delivery if an item arrives misdescribed or damaged.
About the Seller
Range & River Books
Biblio member since 2006
Bishop, California
About Range & River Books
With thousands of books on the shelves, and specializations in the fiction and nonfiction that make our region great, Range & River Books is another treasure of the Eastern High Sierra and a great place to browse. We are working to list more books on-line every day for customers around the world. We specialize in Eastern California, Owens Valley and Great Basin History and Natural History, Mountaineering and Climbing, Western Americana, Literature, Rare and Collectible, Children's, and Cookbooks. Stock in store includes thousands of popular fiction titles, science fiction, mysteries, and an amazing selection of vintage volumes including the colorful People's Book Club editions from the 1930's to 1940's, so contact us if you have an interest in those areas!
Glossary
Some terminology that may be used in this description includes:
- Shelf Wear
- Shelf wear (shelfwear) describes damage caused over time to a book by placing and removing a book from a shelf. This damage is...
- First Edition
- In book collecting, the first edition is the earliest published form of a book. A book may have more than one first edition in...
- Edges
- The collective of the top, fore and bottom edges of the text block of the book, being that part of the edges of the pages of a...
- Tight
- Used to mean that the binding of a book has not been overly loosened by frequent use.
- Spine
- The outer portion of a book which covers the actual binding. The spine usually faces outward when a book is placed on a shelf....
- Jacket
- Sometimes used as another term for dust jacket, a protective and often decorative wrapper, usually made of paper which wraps...