H. L. Mencken, the twentieth century's greatest newspaper journalist, a famous wit, and a fearless iconoclast, fought for civil liberties and free speech yet held paradoxical views of minorities and was conflicted as a German-American during World War II. Marion Rodgers frames the public man and the private man within the context of his era, and covers the many love affairs that made him known as the "German Valentino," his happy marriage at age fifty to Sarah Haardt, and his pivotal role in introducing James Joyce, F. Scott Fitzgerald, and Langston Hughes to the American literary scene.