About the book
Marion Elizabeth Rodgers covers the public and private life of H.L. Mencken, the newspaper journalist, wit and stylist rarely far from controversy. She writes about the love affairs that earned him the nickname The German Valentino, his marriage at 50 to Sara Haardt, and his partnership with the theater critic George Jean Nathan. The book follows his fights for civil liberties and free speech, the Scopes Monkey Trial, his long campaign against Prohibition and his battles with press censorship. It also covers his role at The Smart Set and The American Mercury, which brought readers Langston Hughes, James Joyce and F. Scott Fitzgerald, and weighs his views of minorities and the strain of being German American through both world wars.
Ryan Holiday named it in his best book recommendations of 2012 as one of a few biographies he considers in the same league as another he had praised.
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This book has 1 recommendation
Ryan Holiday (Founder/Brass Check)
If you do enjoy this biography, I followed it up with a few others I consider to be in the same league: Knightâs Cross: A Life of Field Marshal Erwin Rommel by David Fraser, Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson, and Mencken: The American Iconoclast.
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