Kevin Baker (born 1958) is an American novelist, political commentator, and journalist.
Early life
Baker was born in
Englewood, New Jersey
Englewood is a city in Bergen County, in the U.S. state of New Jersey, which at the 2020 United States census had a population of 29,308. Englewood was incorporated as a city by an act of the New Jersey Legislature on March 17, 1899, from por ...
,
["Kevin (Breen) Baker." ''Contemporary Authors Online''. Detroit: Gale, 2005. Retrieved via ''Biography in Context'' database 2016-06-19.] and grew up in
Rockport, Massachusetts.
[Shafner, Rhonda (December 29, 2002).]
At Home with History: Books Have Long Taken Writer Kevin Baker into the Past
" ''Reading Eagle'' (Reading, Pa.). Retrieved via Google News 2016-06-19. As a youth, he worked on the local newspaper ''
Gloucester Daily Times
The ''Gloucester Daily Times'' is an American daily newspaper published Monday through Saturday mornings in Gloucester, Massachusetts by Eagle-Tribune Publishing Company, a subsidiary of Community Newspaper Holdings Inc. The price is $0.75.
In ...
'',
covering school-boy sports, as well as town meetings and other civic affairs. He graduated from
Columbia University
Columbia University (also known as Columbia, and officially as Columbia University in the City of New York) is a private research university in New York City. Established in 1754 as King's College on the grounds of Trinity Church in Manhatt ...
in 1980,
with a major in political science.
Career
In 1993, Baker's first book, ''
Sometimes You See it Coming'' (1993),
a contemporary baseball novel loosely based on the life of
Ty Cobb
Tyrus Raymond Cobb (December 18, 1886 – July 17, 1961), nicknamed "the Georgia Peach", was an American Major League Baseball (MLB) center fielder. He was born in rural Narrows, Georgia. Cobb spent 22 seasons with the Detroit Tigers, the ...
, was published.
He was the chief historical researcher on
Harold Evans
Sir Harold Matthew Evans (28 June 192823 September 2020) was a British-American journalist and writer. In his career in his native Britain, he was editor of ''The Sunday Times'' from 1967 to 1981, and its sister title ''The Times'' for a year f ...
’s illustrated history of the United States, ''
The American Century
The American Century is a characterization of the period since the middle of the 20th century as being largely dominated by the United States in political, economic, and cultural terms. It is comparable to the description of the period 1815–19 ...
'' (1998). He was a columnist ("In the News") for ''American Heritage'' magazine from 1998 to 2007.
In 2009 appeared on
C-SPAN
Cable-Satellite Public Affairs Network (C-SPAN ) is an American cable and satellite television network that was created in 1979 by the cable television industry as a nonprofit public service. It televises many proceedings of the United States ...
's ''
Washington Journal
''Washington Journal'' is an American television series on the C-SPAN television network in the format of a political call-in and interview program. The program features elected officials, government administrators and journalists as guests, an ...
'' and ''
The Colbert Report
''The Colbert Report'' ( ) is an American late-night talk and news satire television program hosted by Stephen Colbert that aired four days a week on Comedy Central from October 17, 2005, to December 18, 2014, for 1,447 episodes. The show fo ...
'', to discuss the
Obama presidency.
Baker is the author of the ''City of Fire'' trilogy, published by
HarperCollins
HarperCollins Publishers LLC is one of the Big Five English-language publishing companies, alongside Penguin Random House, Simon & Schuster, Hachette, and Macmillan. The company is headquartered in New York City and is a subsidiary of News Cor ...
, which consists of the following historical novels: ''
Dreamland'' (1998); the bestselling ''Paradise Alley'' (2002); and ''Strivers Row'' (2006). The middle volume of the trilogy won the 2003
James Fenimore Cooper Prize for Best Historical Fiction
The Society of American Historians Prize for Historical Fiction, formerly known as the James Fenimore Cooper Prize, is a biennial award given for the best Historical American fiction by the Society of American Historians. It is awarded in the odd ...
and the 2003
American Book Award
The American Book Award is an American literary award that annually recognizes a set of books and people for "outstanding literary achievement". According to the 2010 awards press release, it is "a writers' award given by other writers" and "the ...
. ''Paradise Alley'' was also chosen by bestselling ''Angela's Ashes'' author, Frank McCourt, as a ''Today'' show book club selection.
In 2009, he wrote a ''Luna Park'', a graphic novel illustrated by Croatian artist
Danijel Žeželj.
[Kois, Dan (January 13, 2010).]
Book World reviews the graphic novel 'Luna Park' by Kevin Baker
ook review
Ook, OoK or OOK may refer to:
* Ook Chung (born 1963), Korean-Canadian writer from Quebec
* On-off keying, in radio technology
* Toksook Bay Airport (IATA code OOK), in Alaska
* Ook!, an esoteric programming language based on Brainfuck
* Ook, th ...
''Washington Post''.
A writer of over 200 newspaper and magazine articles, Baker was the recipient of a 2017
Guggenheim fellowship for non-fiction.
Baker lives in
New York City
New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the List of United States cities by population, most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the L ...
, where he is a contributing editor to and bi-monthly columnist for
Harper's Magazine,
["Kevin (Breen) Baker." ''The Writers Directory''. Detroit: St. James Press, 2016. Retrieved via ''Biography in Context'' database 2016-06-19.] and a regular contributor to Politico.com, ''
The New Republic
''The New Republic'' is an American magazine of commentary on politics, contemporary culture, and the arts. Founded in 1914 by several leaders of the progressive movement, it attempted to find a balance between "a liberalism centered in hum ...
,'' ''
The New York Times
''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid ...
,'' and ''
The New York Times Book Review
''The New York Times Book Review'' (''NYTBR'') is a weekly paper-magazine supplement to the Sunday edition of ''The New York Times'' in which current non-fiction and fiction books are reviewed. It is one of the most influential and widely rea ...
''.
Bibliography
* ''
Sometimes You See It Coming'' (1993)
* ''The American Century'' (1998; with
Harold Evans
Sir Harold Matthew Evans (28 June 192823 September 2020) was a British-American journalist and writer. In his career in his native Britain, he was editor of ''The Sunday Times'' from 1967 to 1981, and its sister title ''The Times'' for a year f ...
and
Gail Buckland
Gail may refer to:
People
*Gail (given name), list of notable people with the given name
Surname
* Jean-Baptiste Gail (1755–1829), French Hellenist scholar
* Max Gail (born 1943), American actor
* Sophie Gail (1775–1819), French singer and ...
)
* ''
Dreamland'' (1999)
* ''Paradise Alley'' (2002)
* “Rudy Giuliani and the Myth of Modern New York” (2005; in ''America's Mayor: The Hidden History of Giuliani's New York'')
* “Lost-Found Nation: The Last Meeting Between Elijah Muhammad and W.D. Fard" (2006; in ''I Wish I'd Been There'')
* ''Strivers Row'' (2006)
* ''Luna Park'' (2011; with artist
Danijel Žeželj)
* ''The Big Crowd'' (2013)
* ''Becoming Mr. October'' (2014)
* ''America The Ingenious: How a nation of dreamers, immigrants, and tinkerers changed the world'' (2016)
References
Further reading
Kevin Baker's Personal Website
{{DEFAULTSORT:Baker, Kevin
Living people
1958 births
Date of birth missing (living people)
20th-century American male writers
20th-century American novelists
21st-century American non-fiction writers
21st-century American novelists
American Book Award winners
American columnists
American male journalists
American male novelists
Columbia College (New York) alumni
Harper's Magazine people
James Fenimore Cooper Prize winners
Novelists from Massachusetts
Novelists from New Jersey
People from Englewood, New Jersey
People from Rockport, Massachusetts
21st-century American male writers