Russell Baker (born 1925) was one of the most distinguished practitioners of the personal-political essay in the English language.Russell Baker was born in rural Morrisonville, Virginia on August 14, ...
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Critical Essay by Virginia Kirkus' Service
Russell Baker, a New York Times Washington correspondent, gets a lot off his chest [in An American in Washington] writing about Washington as a triba...
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Critical Essay by Phil Elderkin
Reading "Poor Russell's Almanac" is a lot like visiting the Internal Revenue Service—with somebody else's tax return!
If you have...
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Critical Essay by Kirkus Reviews
"Observer" columns from Russell Baker are the perfect light-beer chasers for the hard-stuff of daily news—but few of the short pieces in this ple...
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Critical Essay by Joseph Mclellan
You can begin quoting Russell Baker in this collection [So This Is Depravity], as you can begin reading him, almost anywhere. Open at random to "The Humble Do...
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Critical Essay by Mary Lee Settle
What do you say about a memoir that has made you cry, made you laugh, brought back streets, sounds and hours of your own growing up and helped you look at them with ...
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Critical Essay by Richard Lingeman
As we all know from reading the higher fan journalism, funny people are really deeply unhappy. They had childhoods that make Charles Dickens's blacking facto...
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Critical Essay by Joe Mysak
[In Growing Up] Russell Baker, the New York Times "Observer" columnist, turns his talent to autobiography. The results are as happy as his fellow Baltimorean...
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Critical Essay by John Lukacs
[Russell Baker] writes serious funny things usually with the purpose of pointing out absurdities, including economists' prevarications, the pretensions of technol...
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Critical Essay by Publishers Weekly
As expected, nothing is immune to Baker's unique comedic observations—the MX missile ("Merrily We Pentagon"), New Yorkers' dogs ...
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Critical Essay by A. J. Anderson
Few things soften and grow moldy quicker than collections of stuff written for newspapers. But Baker … [survives] very well when pressed between the covers of ...
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Critical Essay by William H. Stringer
The only thing worrisome about [An American in Washington, a] wild Lord Bryce's guide on how Washington's denizens behave, is that someone may rega...
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Critical Essay by Sidney Hyman
[Russell Baker] has written a book whose laughter better serves the cause of what is truly serious and solemn than any thundering from a pulpit. The author's fin...
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Critical Essay by John Martin
Russell Baker is perhaps the funniest newspaper columnist there is, and, after Murray Kempton, the finest stylist in contemporary journalism. Regrettably, his lyrical an...
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Critical Essay by Gerald Gottlieb
Baker's method [in No Cause for Panic] is irony rather than whimsy, sarcasm rather than ranting. His material is the entire United States of America and his t...
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Critical Essay by Virginia Kirkus' Service
Baker's squibs and brief forays have an uncommon ability to touch the center of our private perceptions. His subject [in All Things Considered...
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Critical Essay by Eliot Fremont-smith
Russell Baker, The New York Times "Observer" columnist, is one of the two funniest and more enlightening commentators on the Washington scene. (The...
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Critical Essay by Erwin D. Canham
For a journalist there's nothing, so to speak, like getting ahead of the news. So [in Our Next President] Russell Baker has written the story of the 1968 pres...
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Critical Essay by R. Z. Sheppard
In the old fairy tale, the grumpy king runs a contest to find a jester who can make him laugh. Unsuccessful contestants go to the block. The winner gets a new suit of...
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After 37 years, PBS' "Masterpiece Theatre" is getting spruced up.The revered anthology series will be split into three mini-seasons, each with its own theme and host — one of whom is Gillian ...
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Today is Tuesday, Aug. 14, the 226th day of 2007. There are 139 days left in the year.Today's Highlight in History:On Aug. 14, 1945, President Harry Truman announced that Japan had surrendered unco...
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“I think for The Sun, and for most papers our size, that the mission is to be the definitive source of state, regional and local news,” Timothy Franklin said.
Mr. Franklin has been edi...
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“I think for The Sun, and for most papers our size, that the mission is to be the definitive source of state, regional and local news,” Timothy Franklin said.
Mr. Franklin has been ed...
Read more