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 tribal...
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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 eve...
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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 plea...
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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 Dol...
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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 m...
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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 factor...
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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 technolo...
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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 a...
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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 regar...
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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 fine...
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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 and...
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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 ta...
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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 presi...
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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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Russell Baker
