Homo Neanderthalensis

Published by Editor on July 21, 2010

A Report on the Scopes Trial by H.L. Mencken (pictured) (The Baltimore Evening Sun, June 29, 1925) I SUCH OBSCENITIES as the forthcoming trial of the Tennessee evolutionist, if they serve no other purpose, at least call attention dramatically to the fact that enlightenment, among mankind, is very narrowly dispersed. It is common to assume [...]

One Hundred Percent American

Published by Editor on July 21, 2010

by Ralph Linton The American Mercury vol. 40 (1937) THERE CAN be no question about the average American’s Americanism or his desire to preserve this precious heritage at all costs. Nevertheless, some insidious foreign ideas have already wormed their way into his civilization without his realizing what was going on. Thus dawn finds the unsuspecting [...]

Anarchist’s Progress

Published by Ann Hendon on June 1, 2010

by Albert Jay Nock This classic essay on freedom was published in The American Mercury in 1927. I. The Majesty of the Law When I was seven years old, playing in front of our house on the outskirts of Brooklyn one morning, a policeman stopped and chatted with me for a few moments. He was [...]

Franklin Delano Roosevelt: An Obituary

Published by Editor on May 17, 2010

by H.L. Mencken April 13, 1945 THE BALTIMORE Sun editorial on Roosevelt this morning begins: “Franklin D. Roosevelt was a great man.” There are heavy black dashes above and below it. The argument, in brief, is that all his skullduggeries and imbecilities were wiped out when “he took an inert and profoundly isolationist people and [...]

Raising the Wind

Published by Editor on May 5, 2010

or, Diddling Considered as One of the Exact Sciences by Edgar Allan Poe [Editor's Note: Poe's hilarious essay — on the subject of cons and con men —  shows that the master of the macabre had an understanding of human nature rivaling Mencken's. ] Hey, diddle diddle, The cat and the fiddle SINCE THE world [...]

Meet General Grant

Published by Editor on April 30, 2010

by H.L. Mencken A review of Meet General Grant by W. E. Woodward (Horace Liverwright, publishers); The American Mercury, 1928 THE DREADFUL title of this book is not the least of its felicities. If they had been saying such things in his day it seems unquestionable that Grant would have said, “Meet the wife.” He [...]

The Calamity of Appomattox

Published by Editor on April 29, 2010

by H.L. Mencken The American Mercury, September 1930 NO AMERICAN historian, so far as I know, has ever tried to work out the probable consequences if Grant instead of Lee had been on the hot spot at Appomattox. How long would the victorious Confederacy have endured? Could it have surmounted the difficulties inherent in the [...]

Zionist Fraud

Published by Editor on April 23, 2010

Famed historian and American Mercury contributor Harry Elmer Barnes wrote this article as a friend of the Jewish people, but an enemy of the fraud that caused — and may well cause — wars between peoples in which millions on all sides lost their lives. It originally appeared in the Fall 1968 issue of The [...]

H.L. Mencken on Governments and Politicians

Published by Editor on April 22, 2010

by Chris Leithner THE VOLUMINOUS writings (nineteen books and thousands of essays, articles and reviews) of H. L. Mencken, one of America’s finest writers and perhaps its greatest journalist and chronicler of American English, are a virtually-forgotten treasure trove of sparkling wit and deep wisdom. Like knowledge of their own history and respect for their [...]

American Mercury Editor’s Home Now a Public Monument

Published by Editor on April 21, 2010

JASON CHILTON MATTHEWS was an American renaissance man — composing poetry and music, fighting against Communism and for the self-determination of indigenous peoples — and he was the editor of The American Mercury, working there during the turbulent 1950s and 1960s. His home in McAllen, Texas — which he named Quinta Mazatlan, and from which [...]

« Previous Page — Next Page »