The Reviewer

A selection of books Sara Haardt-Mencken reviewed

A prolific writer and reader, Sara Haardt-Mencken reviewed scores of books. Listed here is only a small selection of books she reviewed. Witty and truthful, her reviews highlight her steadfast connection with the South, as she often reviewed books dealing with her homeland.

Below the James: A Plantation Sketch by William Cabel Bruce

Published June 26, 1927 in The New York Herald

“Now, Senator Bruce is a Southerner of parts: no one, after even a cursory glance at his book, could doubt for an instant that he knows his Virginia and felt deeply about it – more, that he lived it and prided himself on it as his own; and yet he manages to write a book covering one of the most dramatic periods in its history without getting the glow and charm of it upon a single page.”

Baltimore: A Not So Serious History by Letitia Stockett

Published 1929 in The New York Herald Tribune

"This book could scarcely have been written at a more propitious moment. Another ten years, in truth, and it might never have been written at all. For the Baltimore that Miss Stockett describes with such fidelity and charm and spaciousness is fast disappearing: old landmarks are being swallowed up overnight; the industrial revolution, long fermenting in the South as a kind of magic yeast for southern cities, is clouding the air with a pall of soot; new streets, new buildings, new faces are springing up so endlessly and with such a gesture of exhibitionism that Baltimore is losing, above everything, the strange, poisonously sweet beauty of its southern character. And Baltimore, first of all, is - or was - intrinsically a southern city. For this reason, perhaps, Miss Stockett has seen her old Baltimore the more clearly."

Mamba’s Daughters by Du Bose Heyward

Published February 3, 1929 in The New York Herald

“If there are any structural defects in this drama of old Charleston and the new South, I find them immaterial. The apposite fact is that Mr. Heyward has achieved a novel of sustained power and truth, a novel that presents, with clarifying force, a revelation of both the past and present in a poetical prose that is itself a genuine revelation of beauty.”

George Washington’s Country by Marietta Minnigerode Andrews

Published November 30, 1930 in The New York Herald Tribune

“[Andrews'] book is not a collection of ‘scattered impressions’ [as] she flippantly calls it, but a moving and valuable chronicle.”

The Limestone Tree by Joseph Hergesheimer

Published January 4, 1931 in The New York Herald Tribune

“What Joseph Hergesheimer says with perfect equanimity is that the South is less American than tropical; that it is sustained less by a national that local tradition; that it thinks not with its head but with its heart…In describing [Kentucky] he has achieved the most distinguished novel of a distinguished career.”

Thunder Below by Thomas Rourke

Published September 5, 1931 in the Greensboro North Carolina News

“It is not a book or an experience, I assure you, that can be put lightly aside.”

Varina Howell: Wife of Jefferson Davis by Eron Rowland

Published December 13, 1931 in The New York Herald Tribune

“Mrs. Rowland’s portrait, on the whole, is very well done. This volume…is more interesting both in content and interpretation than the previous one. Occasionally, the narrative is lost in rather heavy attempts to discuss the political background….”

Not Magnolia by Edith Everett Taylor

Published in The New York Herald Tribune

"As hard as Miss Taylor tries, and for all the soaring lines she gives [her main characters], they still remain on paper. The reason undoubtedly is that they largely carry the burden of a conspicuous and altogether unworthy plot."

Toucoutou by Edward Larocque Tinker

Published in The New York Herald Tribune

"In these, and other episodes Mr. Tinker has amasses a vast amount of picturesque detail - so vast, in fact, that it often gets in the way of his story. If it were a shade less picturesque or a shade less dramatic, his book would be quite hopeless. There is an air of artificiality about the whole, as if Mr. Tinker had determined to cram in all of his carefully collected data, whether his plot and characters could assimilate them or not."

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