Heathen Days

Knopf, 1943. First Edition. Hardcover. Very Good/Fair. Signed. Hardcover, Knopf, 1943. Stated First Edition on copyright page, with no indication of later printing. Signed by Mencken on front free endpaper. Book is in Very Good condition. Full bound tan cloth with "HLM" in red to front board, blue design and red lettering to spine, and blue "Borzoi" and dog design to lower rear panel. Blue top stain to text block is faded. Clean inside and out; binding solid and square with no splitting to hinges. Some foxing to spine. Unclipped dust jacket with $3.00 price intact is in Good condition. Front cover drawing vignette by George Salter. Fingertip-sized chip to middle top of rear panel; small chip and wear to bottom spine; 1/4 inch missing from top spine; edge and corner wear; front fold is split almost to midpoint. Stabilized in mylar dust jacket protector. From the front flap: "All his life long. and that now sixty-two years. H. L. Mencken has been one of the most industrious readers, writers, and journalists that our country has ever known. But despite his labors in the Augean stables of American art, music, letters, medicine. politics, science, moral theology, and Brauerei, he has found time to get a great deal of simple fun out of his own buffooneries and those of his fellow citizens. In this third volume of his memoirs, covering the highlights of forty active years, he has set down some of the juicier and more irreverent of his recollections for your edification. Would you get an inside look at the Scopes trial? Read Mencken. Do you know what it's like to sneak into an audience with the Pope? Read Mencken. Have you ever wondered about the anonymous genius who discovered and managed the great Joe Gans? Read Mencken. Would you like a reporter's-eye view of two Democratic National Conventions? Read Mencken. Would you see the wheels within the turning wheels of a Cuban revolution? Read Mencken. For intimate glimpses of old-time press agents, secondary education in Baltimore in the nineties. Prohibition and how it didn't work, the relation between Bach and beer, and matters of similar cosmological import, read Mencken. There is no one better than Mencken when he's at his brilliant, corruscating best--and be is definitely at his best in Heathen Days.