In Defense of Women Audiobook (Free)

Originally published in 1918, this book considers topics that remain of vital interest to today’s readers, including monogamy and polygamy, the twice standard, sexual harassment, and declining marriage rates. Written in Mencken’s quality no-nonsense manner, In Defense of Females crackles with controversy and caustic wit.

“The simple truth is that neither sex, without some fertilization by the complementary characters of the other, is capable of the best reaches of individual endeavor. Man, without a saving touch of girl in him, is definitely too doltish, as well naive and intimate, too conveniently deluded and lulled to sleep by his imagination to be anything above a cavalryman, a theologian, or a standard bank director. And female, without some trace of that divine innocence which is usually masculine, is too harshly the realist for those vast projections of the extravagant which lie at the heart of what we should call genius. Here, as elsewhere in the world, the best results are obtained by a mingling of elements.”-H. L. Mencken