SOURCE: "Roosevelt: An Autopsy," in Prejudices: Second Series, edited by H. L. Mencken, Alfred A. Knopf, 1920, pp.102-35.

Mencken was one of the most influential figures in American literature from the First World War until the early years of the Great Depression. His strongly individualistic, irreverent outlook on life and his vigorous, invective-charged writing style helped establish the iconoclastic spirit of the Jazz Age and significantly shaped the direction of American literature. In the following essay, Mencken condemns what he considers unjustifiably favorable portrayals of Roosevelt by his early biographers.

One thinks of Dr. Woodrow Wilson's biography of George Washington as of one of the strangest of all the world's books. Washington: the first, and perhaps also the last American gentleman. Wilson: the self-bamboozled Presbyterian, the right-thinker, the great moral statesman, the perfect model of the Christian cad. It is as if the Rev. Dr. Billy Sunday should...