Ernest Jerome Hopkins

This collection of satiric journalism written by Ambrose Bierce puts to shame the pundits and opinion writers of today. Bierce was a fierce writer who saw most public figures as corrupt, dishonest, laughable, and foolish whether on the right or on the left. He called them on their folly, satirized them, and made them small by recounting what they did. That no one was safe goes without saying. What sets him apart was his indifference to party, class, or faction. He scorned them all. He didn't inspire anger -- that wasn't his goal -- rather he made his targets laughable, and that undid them. This book collects some fine examples of his style. Yes, it's dated and the world has moved on, but it's still inspiring stuff. And some is still relevant: "Our whole system of government, national, state and municipal, is radically wrong. It is idiotic. Everybody feels it to be so, but hardly anybody wants it altered. If some imaginative practical joker had been appointed by the malevolent gods to devise, for our sins, a system of municipal government, he would have invented something like what we have, though better." He's speaking of San Francisco in 1881 but, of course, nothing has changed. And no one is saying it.… (altro)