From the American Mercury 1927

This volume, published by Knopf on rag paper in a limited edition of 600 copies, collects several representative essays from H.L. Mencken's American Mercury magazine from 1927. The bonbon at the end of the meal is an editorial by Mencken imagining the fate of the first person who harnessed fire (killed by the religious authorities). There is an account of a gang's bank robbery by one of the robbers, advice on how to beat the stock market (think illogically), and a lament about the proliferation of laws in America. In this last piece, the author predicts the coming of an American Justinian to eradicate our plague of laws. Eighty years later, still no sign.