The Skeptic A Life of H.L. Mencken by Terry Teachout HarperCollins, 432 pp., $29.95 IN THE FALL OF 1923, James M. Cain, a reporter then aspiring to a literary career, had lunch in Baltimore with H.L.

Vincent de Paul Fitzpatrick III, a Loyola Blakefield English teacher who pursued a second career as a scholar of the newspaper critic and skeptic H.L. Mencken, died of a heart attack Saturday. The ...

IN THE summer of 1948, H. L. Mencken was within two years of his Biblical allotment. As a lifelong hypochondriac he was more aware of its coming, as a kind of I) Day, than most men of sixty-eight; and ...

H.L. Mencken has a conservative problem. The Baltimore journalist became the poster boy for literary modernism thanks to his literary criticism and nationally syndicated op-ed columns, in addition to ...

THIS MONTH MARKS THE 50TH anniversary of H.L. Mencken’s passing. Recently described by the New York Times as “the premier social critic of the first half of the 20th century,” Mencken poured out more ...

H. L MENCKEN: A PORTRAIT FROM MEMORY (240 pp.)—Charles Angoff—Thomas Yoseloff ($3.95). During Prohibition, the red-letter days at the American Mercury were the ones on which the bootlegger’s man in ...

You are able to gift 5 more articles this month. Anyone can access the link you share with no account required. Learn more. In his column of Jan. 23 (“Why America often comes up short on presidential ...

Journalism, like youth, is a stuff will not endure. It is of the moment. "Tomorrow's fish wrapping." But there are a few journalists, by dint of great reporting or great style, whose work lingers.

H.L. Mencken was a man who firmly believed that "[m]en are surely not at their worst when they say what they actually think, even if it is shocking to their neighbors," and 80 years after some of ...

Please Note: Blog posts are not selected, edited or screened by Seeking Alpha editors. "I believe that it is better to tell the truth than a lie. I believe it is better to be free than to be a slave.