H.L. Mencken was America’s greatest journalist, a legendary writer and editor whose caustic essays and pithy phrasemaking place him in the company of Twain, Wilde, and Orwell. From his days as a teenaged cub reporter in turn-of-the-century Baltimore to his tenure as founding editor of The American Mercury, in the Roaring Twenties, Mencken was the quintessential voice of American letters. Here, one of today’s leading critics takes a frank, forthright look at his life and legacy.

Terry Teachout has combed through reams of Mencken’s private papers tocreate unsparing portrait of the artist as intellectual gadfly, working newspaperman, devoted husband, and faithless lover. Meticulously researched and masterfully written, The Skeptic is destined to become a classic of American biography.