A Mencken Chrestomathy
About this audiobook
Edited and annotated by H. L. M., this is a selection from his out-of-print writings. They come mostly from books—the six installments of the Prejudices series, A Book of Burlesques, In Defense of Women, Notes on Democracy, Making a President, A Book of Calumny, Treatise on Right and Wrong—but there are also magazine and newspaper pieces that never got between covers (from the American Mercury, the Smart Set, and the Baltimore Evening Sun) and some notes that were never previously published at all.
Listeners will find edification and amusement in his estimates of a variety of Americans—Woodrow Wilson, Aimee Semple McPherson, Roosevelt I and Roosevelt II, James Gibbons Huneker, Rudolph Valentino, Calvin Coolidge, Ring Lardner, Theodore Dreiser, and Walt Whitman. Those musically inclined will enjoy his pieces on Beethoven, Schubert, and Wagner, and there is material for a hundred controversies in his selections on Joseph Conrad, Thorstein Veblen, Nietzsche, and Madame Blavatsky.
About the author
H. L. Mencken (1880–1956) was an American journalist, critic, essayist, satirist, and scholar. He began his career on local newspapers in 1899, becoming a reporter for the Baltimore Morning Herald and then serving on the staff of the Baltimore Sun. He is best known for the aggressive iconoclasm of his editorial policies, challenging cherished beliefs and institutions. The term “Menckenian” has entered multiple dictionaries to describe anything of or pertaining to Mencken, including his combative rhetorical and prose style.
Grover Gardner has recorded more than 650 audiobooks since beginning his career in 1981. He's been named one of the "Best Voices of the Century" as well as a "Golden Voice" by AudioFile magazine. Gardner has garnered over 20 AudioFile Earphones Awards and is the recipient of an Audio Publishers Association Audie Award, as well as a three-time finalist. In 2005, Publishers Weekly deemed him "Audiobook Narrator of the Year." Gardner has also narrated hundreds of audiobooks under the names Tom Parker and Alexander Adams. Among his many titles are Marcus Sakey's At the City's Edge, as well as Star Wars: The Phantom Menace, Mark Twain's The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, and John Irving's The Cider House Rules. Gardner studied Theater and Art History at Rollins College and received a Master's degree in Acting from George Washington University. He lives in Oregon with his significant other and daughter.
