An idiot, in modern use, is a stupid or foolish person.
Henry Louis Mencken was an American journalist, essayist, satirist, cultural critic, and scholar of American English. He commented widely on the social scene, literature, music, prominent politicians, and contemporary movements. His satirical reporting on the Scopes Trial, which he dubbed the "Monkey Trial", also gained him attention. The term Menckenian has entered multiple dictionaries to describe anything of or pertaining to Mencken, including his combative rhetorical and prose style.
Walter Lippmann was an American writer, reporter, and political commentator. With a career spanning 60 years, he is famous for being among the first to introduce the concept of the Cold War, coining the term "stereotype" in the modern psychological meaning, as well as critiquing media and democracy in his newspaper column and several books, most notably his 1922 Public Opinion.
Paul Edward Gottfried is an American paleoconservative political philosopher, historian, and writer. He is a former Professor of Humanities at Elizabethtown College in Pennsylvania. He is editor-in-chief of the paleoconservative magazine Chronicles. He is an associated scholar at the Mises Institute, a libertarian think tank, and the US correspondent of Nouvelle École, a Nouvelle Droite journal.
James Mallahan Cain was an American novelist, journalist and screenwriter. He is widely regarded as a progenitor of the hardboiled school of American crime fiction.
The Devil's Dictionary is a satirical dictionary written by American journalist Ambrose Bierce, consisting of common words followed by humorous and satirical definitions. The lexicon was written over three decades as a series of installments for magazines and newspapers. Bierce's witty definitions were imitated and plagiarized for years before he gathered them into books, first as The Cynic's Word Book in 1906 and then in a more complete version as The Devil's Dictionary in 1911.
Irving Babbitt was an American academic and literary critic, noted for his founding role in a movement that became known as the New Humanism, a significant influence on literary discussion and conservative thought in the period between 1910 and 1930. He was a cultural critic in the tradition of Matthew Arnold and a consistent opponent of romanticism, as represented by the writings of Jean-Jacques Rousseau. Politically he can, without serious distortion, be called a follower of Aristotle and Edmund Burke. He was an advocate of classical humanism but also offered an ecumenical defense of religion. His humanism implied a broad knowledge of various moral and religious traditions. His book Democracy and Leadership (1924) is regarded as a classic text of political conservatism. Babbitt is regarded as a major influence over American cultural and political conservatism.
The Great Monkey Trial is a book on the Scopes Trial by L. Sprague de Camp, first published in hardcover by Doubleday in 1968. The book is a non-fiction account of the trial, as well as its social and political context and impact. This history of the trial was based on the archives of the A.C.L.U., assorted newspaper files, correspondence and interviews with over a dozen of those present at the trial, books and magazine articles written on the trial, and a couple of visits to Dayton. The book also contains several political cartoons published at the time of the trial. Several critics have referred to the book as the definitive or comprehensive account of the Scopes Trial.
The American Mercury was an American magazine published from 1924 to 1981. It was founded as the brainchild of H. L. Mencken and drama critic George Jean Nathan. The magazine featured writing by some of the most important writers in the United States through the 1920s and 1930s.
Harold Lenoir Davis, also known as H. L. Davis, was an American novelist and poet. A native of Oregon, he won the Pulitzer Prize for his novel Honey in the Horn, the only Pulitzer Prize for Literature given to a native Oregonian. Later living in California and Texas, he also wrote short stories for magazines such as The Saturday Evening Post.
Gentlemen Prefer Blondes: The Intimate Diary of a Professional Lady (1925) is a comic novel written by American author Anita Loos. The story follows the dalliances of a young blonde gold-digger and flapper named Lorelei Lee "in the bathtub-gin era of American history." Published the same year as F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby and Carl Van Vechten's Firecrackers, the lighthearted work is one of several famous 1925 American novels which focus upon the carefree hedonism of the Jazz Age.
The Phantom Public is a book published in 1925 by journalist Walter Lippmann in which he expresses his lack of faith in the democratic system by arguing that the public exists merely as an illusion, myth, and inevitably a phantom. As Carl Bybee wrote, "For Lippmann the public was a theoretical fiction and government was primarily an administrative problem to be solved as efficiently as possible, so that people could get on with their own individualistic pursuits".
Drift and Mastery: An Attempt to Diagnose the Current Unrest is the second book by American journalist and political thinker Walter Lippmann. Published in the Fall of 1914, Drift and Mastery argues that rational scientific governing can overcome forces of societal drift. Lippmann argued that due to the profound social and economic change old ideas and institutions lacked relevance. Specifically, Drift and Mastery warns against a reliance on broad theories and the framework of competition and self-interest. Democracy and society at large, he argued, was unable to address problems because it was adrift, lacking intentionality and discipline. Lippmann's prescription in Drift and Mastery was deliberate and scientific governing, what he termed mastery. This forward-looking progressive vision sought a better society through rational, scientific order, while rejecting Marxist, Utopian and traditionalist thinking. Drift and Mastery received enormously positive reviews, establishing Lippmann as an important public intellectual and figure within the progressive movement. Although Lippmann later lost faith in the promise of science and rationality in government, Drift and Mastery was and is regarded as an important document of the progressive movement.
The Forum was an American magazine founded in 1885 by Isaac Rice. It existed under various names and formats until it ceased publication in 1950. Published in New York, its most notable incarnation was symposium based. Articles from prominent guest authors debated all sides of a contemporary political or social issue, often across several issues and in some cases, several decades. At other times, it published fiction and poetry, and published articles produced by staff columnists in a "news roundup" format.
Sara Powell Haardt was an American author and professor of English literature. Though she died at the age of 37 of meningitis, she produced a considerable body of work including newspaper reviews, articles, essays, a novel The Making of a Lady, several screenplays and over 50 short stories. She is central to John Barton Wolgamot's notorious book-length poem, In Sara Mencken, Christ and Beethoven there were men and women (1944), recorded by the composer Robert Ashley.
Leonard Keene Hirshberg was an American physician and popular medical writer who was convicted of mail fraud.
Joseph C. Goulden is an American writer and former political reporter.
Edwin Franden Dakin (1898–1976) was an American advertising executive and author who wrote a critical biography of Mary Baker Eddy.
Marion Elizabeth Rodgers is a scholar, author, and editor recognized as the foremost authority on H. L. Mencken.
Lilith: A Dramatic Poem is an acclaimed four-act fantasy verse drama written in blank verse by American poet and playwright George Sterling from 1904 to 1918, and first published in 1919. Influential critic H. L. Mencken said of Sterling: “I think his dramatic poem Lilith was the greatest thing he ever wrote.” The New York Times declared Lilith “the finest thing in poetic drama yet done in America and one of the finest poetic dramas yet written in English.” Author Theodore Dreiser said: “It rings richer in thought than any American dramatic poem with which I am familiar.” Poet Clark Ashton Smith wrote: “Lilith is certainly the best dramatic poem in English since the days of Swinburne and Browning. … The lyrics interspersed throughout the drama are as beautiful as any by the Elizabethans.” In his book George Sterling, Thomas E. Benediktsson stated: “The allegorical Lilith is undoubtedly Sterling’s best poem.”
