In Defense of Women by H. L. Mencken; Unabridged MP3 Audio Book; Narrator Fred Williams

Originally published in 1922, this book considers topics that remain of vital interest to today’s readers, including monogamy and polygamy, the double standard, sexual harassment, and declining marriage rates. Written in Mencken’s characteristic no-nonsense manner, In Defense of Women crackles with controversy and caustic wit.

“The truth is that neither sex, without some fertilization by the complementary characters of the other, is capable of the highest reaches of human endeavor. Man, without a saving touch of woman in him, is too doltish, too naïve and romantic, too easily deluded and lulled to sleep by his imagination to be anything above a cavalryman, a theologian, or a bank director. And woman, without some trace of that divine innocence which is masculine, is too harshly the realist for those vast projections of the fancy which lie at the heart of what we call genius. Here, as elsewhere in the universe, the best effects are obtained by a mingling of elements” (H. L. Mencken).

H. L. Mencken (1880-1956), Baltimore journalist, critic, and essayist, began his career on local newspapers in 1899, becoming editor of the Evening Herald in 1905-6, then serving on the staff of the Evening Sun during 1916-17 as a war correspondent in Germany. He became literary critic of The Smart Set in 1908, and was co-editor of this lively periodical with George Jean Nathan. Mencken and Nathan also founded The American Mercury in 1924, which Mencken edited until 1933. Mencken is best known for the aggressive iconoclasm of his editorial policies in these magazines, especially during the decade following World War I, when he exhibited a savagely satirical reaction against the political and cultural imperfections of the time.