{"product_id":"9780060505295","title":"The Skeptic: A Life of H.L. Mencken","description":"\u003cp\u003eWhen 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.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eFrom his carefree days as a teenage cub reporter in turn-of-the-century Baltimore to his noisy tenure as founding editor of the \u003ci\u003eAmerican Mercury,\u003c\/i\u003e 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 \u003ci\u003eSun.\u003c\/i\u003e 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.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eNo modern writer has been more controversial than H. L. Mencken. His fans saw him as the fearless leader of the endless battle against ignorance andhypocrisy, 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.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eHimself 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, \u003ci\u003eThe Skeptic\u003c\/i\u003e vividly evokes the life and legacy of a true American legend.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eAuthor Biography: \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eTerry Teachout writes about literature and the arts for the \u003ci\u003eNew York Times, Time, National Review,\u003c\/i\u003e the \u003ci\u003eWashington Post, \u003c\/i\u003ethe \u003ci\u003eWall Street Journal,\u003c\/i\u003e and \u003ci\u003eCommentary.\u003c\/i\u003e His books include \u003ci\u003eA Second Mencken Chrestomaby,\u003c\/i\u003e a manuscript he rediscovered among Mencken's private papers. He lives in New York City.\u003c\/p\u003e  ","brand":"HarperCollins Publishers","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":47021635567856,"sku":"9780060505295","price":15.95,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0737\/7593\/9824\/files\/9780060505295_p0.jpg?v=1763619634","url":"https:\/\/shop-qa.barnesandnoble.com\/products\/9780060505295","provider":"Barnes \u0026 Noble (DEV)","version":"1.0","type":"link"}