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Notes on Democracy
- Author
- H. L. Mencken
- Narrator
- Stefan Rudnicki
- Publisher
- Blackstone Publishing
- Publish Date
- 18 July 2023
- Run Time
- 4 hours 50 minutes
- Format
- Audiobook
What to expect
“Democracy came into the Western World to the tune of sweet, soft music. There was, at the start, no harsh bawling from below; there was only a dulcet twittering from above.”
When H. L. Mencken wrote Notes on Democracy the country was coping with the aftermath of World War I, contending with Prohibition, and watching the Scopes trial play out; the air of the nation was full of paranoia and intolerance. And while it may seem that certain views and statements in the book are dated and out of touch, the general critiques and philosophy found in this book remain as relevant (and as controversial) today as it was when it was first published in 1926.
H. L. Mencken was one of America’s most important and influential writers, and he spares nothing and no one in this biting analysis of our system of government. In his review of the book in The Saturday Review of Literature, Pulitzer Prize winner Walter Lipmann describes Notes on Democracy as a “tremendous polemic” that is able to “destroy, by rendering it ridiculous and unfashionable, the democratic tradition of the American pioneers,” and even compares it to The Social Contract by Jean-Jacques Rousseau. It is Mencken’s trademark satirical and combative rhetoric and style that make the contentious and at times hyperbolic arguments of Notes on Democracy a vital piece of literature in the forever ongoing examination of democracy in America.
Featuring an introduction by Stefan Rudnicki.
Critics Review
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“[A] tremendous polemic…[which] destroy[s] by rendering it ridiculous and unfashionable, the democratic tradition of the American pioneers.”
Saturday Review of Literature (1926)
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Details
- Author
- H. L. Mencken
- Narrator
- Stefan Rudnicki
- Duration
- 4 hours 50 minutes
- Release Date
- 18 July 2023
- ISBN
- 9798212546256
- Format
- Audiobook
- Publisher
- Blackstone Publishing
- Genre
- Political structures: democracy
Synopsis
Written during the 1920s, an era that reflects much of our modern times 100 years later, this book by culture critic and scholar Mencken dissects what democracy is.The book’s three parts are “Democratic Man,” “The Democratic State” that includes a chapter on popular will and a chapter on politicians, and “Democracy and Liberty” with a section on corruption under democracy, followed by a “Coda” that discusses the future of democracy.The author places politicians into two camps: the demagogue, who “preaches doctrines he knows to be untrue to men he knows to be idiots” and the demi-slave, “who listens to what these idiots have to say and then pretends that he believes it himself.” He depicts politicians as “men who have sold their honor for their jobs.”Mencken, who covered the 1920s’ Scopes Trial, has been called one of America’s greatest journalists. Here, with his cynical humor, he skewers big government, Puritanism, and sanctimony.
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