Ring Lardner’s influ­ence on Amer­i­can let­ters is arguably greater than that of any oth­er Amer­i­can writer in the ear­ly part of the twen­ti­eth cen­tu­ry. Laud­ed by crit­ics and the pub­lic for his ground­break­ing short sto­ries, Lard­ner was also the country’s best-known jour­nal­ist in the 1920s and ear­ly 1930s, when his voice was all but inescapable in Amer­i­can news­pa­pers and mag­a­zines. Lardner’s tren­chant, obser­vant, sly, and cyn­i­cal writ­ing style, along with a deep under­stand­ing of human foibles, made his arti­cles won­der­ful­ly read­able and his words res­onate to this day.

Ron Rapoport has gath­ered the best of Lardner’s jour­nal­ism from his ear­li­est days at the South Bend Times through his years at the Chica­go Tri­bune and his week­ly col­umn for the Bell Syn­di­cate, which appeared in 150 news­pa­pers and reached eight mil­lion read­ers. In these columns Lard­ner not only cov­ered the great sport­ing events of the era — from Jack Dempsey’s fights to the World Series and even an America’s Cup — he also wrote about pol­i­tics, war, and Pro­hi­bi­tion, as well as par­o­dies, poems, and pen­e­trat­ing obser­va­tions on Amer­i­can life.

The Lost Jour­nal­ism of Ring Lard­ner rein­tro­duces this jour­nal­is­tic giant and his work and shows Lard­ner to be the rarest of writ­ers: a spot-on chron­i­cler of his time and place who remains con­tem­po­rary to sub­se­quent generations.