This 1917 collection of essays criticizing American culture and authors contains Mencken's classic essay "Puritanism as a Literary Force." Mencken was a well-known critic of "Puritanism," which he termed the American fear that "someone, somewhere, may be happy." Throughout the 1910s Mencken became an increasingly outspoken critic of American culture, in part because of the jingoistic fervor of World War I and growing Prohibitionist sentiment. Mencken excoriated Puritanism in American culture for, above all else, lacking aesthetic sense and persecuting dissenting views—including Mencken's own.
