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A major literary event: Mencken's dazzling autobiography, with 200 pages of his own never-before-published commentary and photos. In 1936, at the age of fifty-five, H. L. Mencken published a reminiscence about his boyhood in The New Yorker, beginning a long and magnificent adventure in autobiography by America's greatest journalist. Mencken went on to gather his childhood recollections in Happy Days (1940) , a richly detailed, poignant account of growing up in Baltimore. A critical and popular success, the book surprised many with its glimpses of a less curmudgeonly Mencken, and there soon followed the absorbing sequels Newspaper Days (1941) , charting his rise at the Baltimore Herald from cub reporter to editor, and Heathen Days (1943) , recounting his varied excursions as journalist and public figure, including his coverage of the Scopes trial in 1925.