Minority Report (Maryland Paperback Bookshelf) - Softcover

Mencken, H. L. L.

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0801885337 ISBN 13: 9780801885334

Publisher: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2006

Synopsis

With a style that combined biting sarcasm with the "language of the free lunch counter," Henry Louis Mencken shook politics and politicians for nearly half a century. Now, fifty years after Mencken’s death, the Johns Hopkins University Press announces The Buncombe Collection, newly packaged editions of nine Mencken classics: Happy Days, Heathen Days, Newspaper Days, Prejudices, Treatise on the Gods, On Politics, Thirty-Five Years of Newspaper Work, Minority Report, and A Second Mencken Chrestomathy.

In 1956, Mencken read through his notebooks and extracted those pieces he thought truest, most pertinent, most precise, or most likely to blow the dust out of a reader's brain.

About this title

Review:

The great skeptic and prose stylist H.L. Mencken had a lifelong habit of keeping notebooks that he'd plumb for ideas. He eventually collected many brief essays from his notebooks and published them as Minority Report, claiming in the book's introduction that the pieces had been selected at random. That may be true, but as Mencken's writing discipline seemed to require him to always produce elegant prose, it's fair to say that his random notebook entries are superior to the polished essays of many other writers. Mencken was simply a national treasure, and Minority Report, as it contains a great many of his observations on a wide variety of subjects, is a good place to begin to get a taste of his eccentrically intelligent style.

From the Back Cover:

In 1956 Mencken could look back on a long and distinguished career that included years at the top of his profession, the publication of three volumes of memoirs, and a steady stream of journalism that made him loved and hated, sometimes by the same person. For Minority Report, he read through his notebooks, extracting those pieces he thought most true, most pertinent, most precise, or most likely to blow the dust out of a reader's brain.

About this edition

• Publisher: Johns Hopkins University Press
• Publication date: 2006
• ISBN 10: 0801885337
• ISBN 13: 9780801885334
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 304