Kevin Baker | |
|---|---|
 Baker in 2015 | |
| Born | 1958 (age 64–65)[1] Englewood, New Jersey, U.S. |
| Occupation |
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| Education | Columbia University |
| Genre | Realistic fiction, historical fiction, Nonfiction |
| Website | |
| kevinbaker | |
Kevin Baker (born 1958) is an American novelist, political commentator, and journalist.
Early life
Baker was born in Englewood, New Jersey,[1] and grew up in Rockport, Massachusetts.[2][3] As a youth, he worked on the local newspaper Gloucester Daily Times,[1] covering high school sports, as well as town meetings and other civic affairs. He graduated from Columbia University in 1980,[1] with a major in political science.[2]
Career
In 1993, Baker's first book, Sometimes You See it Coming (1993),[1] a contemporary baseball novel loosely based on the life of Ty Cobb, was published.[2]
He was the chief historical researcher on Harold Evans’s illustrated history of the United States, The American Century (1998).[4] He was a columnist ("In the News") for American Heritage magazine from 1998 to 2007.[5] In 2009 appeared on C-SPAN's Washington Journal and The Colbert Report, to discuss the Obama presidency.[6]
Baker is the author of the City of Fire trilogy, published by HarperCollins, 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[7] and the 2003 American Book Award.[8] Paradise Alley was also chosen by bestselling Angela's Ashes author, Frank McCourt, as a Today show book club selection.
In 2009, he wrote Luna Park, a graphic novel illustrated by Croatian artist Danijel Žeželj.[9]
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, where he is a contributing editor to and bi-monthly columnist for Harper's Magazine,[5] and a regular contributor to Politico.com, The New Republic, The New York Times, and The New York Times Book Review.
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
- 1 2 3 4 5 "Kevin (Breen) Baker." Contemporary Authors Online. Detroit: Gale, 2005. Retrieved via Biography in Context database 2016-06-19.
- 1 2 3 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.
- ↑ "Kevin Baker – About." Kevin Baker [author's website]. kevinbaker.info. Retrieved 2016-06-19.
- ↑ Reynolds, David S. (October 11, 1998). "The March of Time: The American Century by Harold Evans with Gail Buckland and Kevin Baker" [book review]. New York Times. "... with the help of a research team headed by Kevin Baker, [Evans] has culled a staggering amount of information from other history books."
- 1 2 "Kevin (Breen) Baker." The Writers Directory. Detroit: St. James Press, 2016. Retrieved via Biography in Context database 2016-06-19.
- ↑ "Book Discussion on Barack Hoover Obama" (June 21, 2009). C-SPAN. www.c-span.org. Retrieved 2016-06-19.
- ↑ "James Fenimore Cooper Prize." Society of American Historians. Retrieved 2016-06-19.
- ↑ "Before Columbus Foundation Presents the American Book Awards 2003" [press release]. Before Columbus Foundation. Available as PDF file on the foundation's website (www.beforecolumbusfoundation.com). Retrieved 2016-06-19.
- ↑ Kois, Dan (January 13, 2010). "Book World reviews the graphic novel 'Luna Park' by Kevin Baker" [book review]. Washington Post.