From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia

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-	'''''Notes on Democracy''''' is a 1926 book by American journalist, satirist, cultural critic [[H. L. Mencken]].	+
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-	The initial print run was only 235 copies; another edition was printed later in 1926. A number of reprints of the book have continued to be issued, with editions released in 2008 and 2012.	+
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-	==Synopsis and impact==	+
-	''Notes on Democracy'' is a critique of [[democracy]]. The book places political leaders into two categories: the [[demagogue]], whom "preaches doctrines he knows to be untrue to men he knows to be idiots" and the demaslave, "who listens to what these idiots have to say and then pretends that he believes it himself." Mencken depicts politicians as "men who have sold their honor for their jobs."	+
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-	The book contains the notable quotes from Mencken that "Democracy is a pathetic belief in the collective wisdom of individual ignorance." and that "Democracy, too, is a religion. It is the worship of jackals by jackasses."	+
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-	==Reception==	+
-	Writing for ''[[The Saturday Review of Literature]]'' [[Walter Lippmann]] described the book as a "tremendous polemic" which "destroy[s] by rendering it ridiculous and unfashionable, the democratic tradition of the American pioneers" and likens ''Notes on Democracy'' to ''[[The Social Contract]]'' by Jean-Jacques Rousseau.	+
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1. redirectSaturday Review (U.S. magazine)