Journalism, US & Canadian Literary Biography, News & Media Biography

Growing Up

Name: Growing Up
Author: Russell Baker
ISBN: 9780451168382

by Russell Baker, Gilbert Riswold

Available on Bookshop Write a review

Books.org participates in affiliate programs including Bookshop.org and the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program. We may earn a commission from qualifying purchases made through links on this page, at no additional cost to you.

Overview

Russell Baker is the 1979 Pulitzer Prize winner for Distinguished Commentary and a columnist for The New York Times. This book traces his youth in the mountains of rural Virginia.

When Baker was only five, his father died. His mother, strong-willed and matriarchal, never looked back. After all, she had three children to raise.

These were depression years, and Mrs. Baker moved her fledgling family to Baltimore. Baker's mother was determined her children would succeed, and we know her regimen worked for Russell. He did everything from delivering papers to hustling subscriptions for the Saturday Evening Post. As is often the case, early hardships made the man.

Synopsis

Russell Baker is the 1979 Pulitzer Prize winner for Distinguished Commentary and a columnist for The New York Times. This book traces his youth in the mountains of rural Virginia.

When Baker was only five, his father died. His mother, strong-willed and matriarchal, never looked back. After all, she had three children to raise.

These were depression years, and Mrs. Baker moved her fledgling family to Baltimore. Baker's mother was determined her children would succeed, and we know her regimen worked for Russell. He did everything from delivering papers to hustling subscriptions for the Saturday Evening Post. As is often the case, early hardships made the man.

Richard Lingeman

''Growing Up'' is touching and funny, a hopeless muddle of sadness and laughter that bears a suspicious resemblance to real life....Like all the best humor, Mr. Baker's is grounded in truth and mellowed by a sense of the sadness in things.... His laughs are distilled from the juices of life. He draws from a time and a world very much in the American grain: memories of listening to grown-ups rocking on the porch and sonorously reciting cliches or of Depression evenings in Baltimore spent around the kitchen table with endless talk and cups of coffee. -- New York Times

About the Author, Russell Baker

Russell Baker is the winner of the 1979 George Polk Award for Commentary, the 1979 Pulitzer Prize for Distinguished Commentary, and the 1983 Pulitzer Prize for Biography for his book Growing Up (1982). He served as a long-time columnist for The New York Times, writing the syndicated column "Observer" and hosted the PBS show Masterpiece Theatre. He also wrote a sequel to Growing Up called The Good Times (1989).

He began his career in 1947 at The Baltimore Sun, going on to join the Washington Bureau of The New York Times in 1954, covering national politics, in particular Congress and the White House. "Observer" began in 1962 and covered everything from national controversies to personal experiences. Baker retired from column writing in 1998, after more than three decades of well-loved and well-read writing. He lives in Leesburg, Virginia with his wife, Mimi, and is a frequent contributor to The New York Review of Books.