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The war's impact on free speech at home, along with Attorney General Mitchell Palmer's brutal raids on suspected radicals, intensified Mencken's belief in the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. But with America at war, the New York Evening Mail closed to him, and The Smart Set in peril, Mencken took on a neutral subject that would forever after identify him as a uniquely American voice: a study of The American Language. Simultaneously, he launched Prejudices, a series of essays attacking the Genteel Tradition in literature and intellectual cowardice. After the war, he returned to the Baltimore Sun, his books were widely embraced, and he became hailed as an important new critic. In 1919, Mencken came to the realization that he lived not in a literary age, but a fiercely political age.

With Mencken's acerbic column and a new staff, the Baltimore Sun becomes a leading chronicler of national news. Mencken took great pleasure in covering politics, but his reputation as a catalyst in American letters also rose in stature as The American Language became a bestseller. With Prejudices: Second Series, Mencken became the instigator of the Southern renaissance. Black intellectuals, among them James Weldon Johnson and W. E. B. Du Bois welcomed Mencken as an important force in the Harlem renaissance. However, just as Mencken was being hailed as a major influence on a new generation of American writers, his old mentor, James Huneker, died.

Mencken's return to his home at 1524 Hollins Street marked the beginning of his critical rehabilitation. With the success of the new edition of The American Language, Mencken began writing a series of nostalgic pieces on his childhood that will form his memoirs and establish the way the next generation would remember him. His opposition against Roosevelt and his New Deal policies did not change as he followed the campaign trail of Kansas Governor Alfred Landon.

Although World War II did not affect Mencken personally, he was dismayed by the way shortages interfered with the routine of American life. He also became disillusioned with the practice of journalism. To Mencken, reporters have become timid bystanders, leaving their work early in order to play golf. Just as he had during World War I, Mencken focused on neutral subjects in his books. His trilogy of memoirs, Happy Days, Newspaper Days, and Heathen Days were greeted with much success, as was his New Dictionary of Quotations and the fourth edition of The American Language.