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, 1925. His early upbringing was not conducive to the development of the elegant, urbane literary style and trenchant criticism of contemporary city life he was to indulge in later. One of his earliest memories was of being nosed in his crib by an inquisitive cow. There were some pleasant memories of growing up close to nature: "summer days drenched in sunlight, fields yellow with buttercups." However, it was not a very progressive community; Baker's father, a stonemason, died of untreated diabetes when the boy was five, even though insulin had been discovered nearly a decade earlier.

Baker's mother, trained as a schoolteacher, had studied for a year in college and encouraged her son's aptitude for language. During these earliest years there...