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 Day"s, "Prejudices," "Treatise on the Gods," "On Politics," "Thirty-Five Years of Newspaper Work," "Minority Report," and "A Second Mencken Chrestomathy."

Written in 1941-42, these highlights capture the excitement of newspaper life in the heyday of print journalism.

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"No greater prose stylist ever wrote for an American newspaper. It is always useful and enjoyable to be reminded of this, as Thirty-five Years of Newspaper Work most certainly does... Should be required reading not merely for all newspaper people but for all those who labor in what we now call 'the media.'" -- Jonathan Yardley, Washington Post Book World

In January 1991 the Enoch Pratt Free Library opened the sealed manuscript of H. L. Mencken's "Thirty-five Years of Newspaper Work." Written in 1941-42 and bequeathed to the library under time-lock upon Mencken's death in 1956, it is among the very last of his papers opened to the public. Thirty-five Years of Newspaper Work, a one-volume edition of highlights from the manuscript, vividly pictures the excitement of newspaper life in the heyday of print journalism.

Here Mencken colorfully recalls his years--mostly with the Baltimore Evening Sun--as a reporter and a writer of editorials that always caused a stir among the public and riots of indignation among his enemies. The volume includes important new material on his coverage of presidential candidates from 1912 to 1940 and the 1925 trial of the man he called the "infidel Scopes."

"The book reveals a man who loved food, alcohol, cigars, and good friends... Mencken had so many friends in high places that a few well-placed telephone calls invariably got him to the heart of the matter and revealed more information than any other reporter could solicit." -- Raymond L. Fischer, USA Today