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 talent is of matching size. He is capable of parody, poetry, galloping fantasy, wistful poignancy, and the simple sneer. He holds himself in constant contempt of Congress, and with grisly joy predicts a time when that body, clogged and rusted at last into utter immobility, will be made a branch of the Smithsonian Institution. On the subject of government gobbledygook he writes like a scathing James Joyce working the Washington beat. Testy, inventive, sardonic, he polishes off his book with a glorious gabble of disdain for television. All is suffused with a realistic intelligence, a cold humor, and an even colder irony—not the least of which resides in the title.

Gerald Gottlieb, "They Could Laugh Dying," in Book Week—The...