William Manchester
This fine biography of H. L. Mencken tells of how, for better or worse, he rose to his unique position as comic genius and preeminent critic of American culture.
In Disturber of the Peace, one finds the facts of the stormy Mencken legend: his hectic and hilarious editorship with George Jean Nathan of The Smart Set, the memorable saga of The American Mercury, the famous Scopes "monkey trial" in Tennessee, and Mencken's own trial in Boston
...The nightmares began for William Manchester twenty-three years after World War II. In his dreams he lived with the recurring image of himself as a battle-weary youth "angrily demanding to know what had happened to the three decades since he had laid down his arms." To find out, Manchester visited those places in the Pacific where as a young Marine he fought the Japanese.
In this intensely powerful memoir, America's preeminent biographer-historian,
...