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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 po ...
,"Kevin (Breen) Baker." ''Contemporary Authors Online''. Detroit: Gale, 2005. Retrieved via ''Biography in Context'' database 2016-06-19. and grew up in
Rockport, Massachusetts Rockport is a seaside town in Essex County, Massachusetts, United States. The population was 6,992 in 2020. Rockport is located approximately northeast of Boston at the tip of the Cape Ann peninsula. Rockport borders Gloucester to its west, and ...
.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'', 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 l ...
, was published. He was the chief historical researcher on Harold Evans’s illustrated history of the United States, '' The American Century'' (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'' 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 C ...
, 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 ''Washington Post''.
A writer of over 200 newspaper and magazine articles, Baker was the recipient of a 2017
Guggenheim fellowship Guggenheim Fellowships are grants that have been awarded annually since by the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation to those "who have demonstrated exceptional capacity for productive scholarship or exceptional creative ability in the art ...
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 ''Harper's Magazine'' is a monthly magazine of literature, politics, culture, finance, and the arts. Launched in New York City in June 1850, it is the oldest continuously published monthly magazine in the U.S. (''Scientific American'' is older, b ...
,"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 hu ...
,'' ''
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 and Gail Buckland) * '' 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