I'm not sure this would be interesting enough to someone who wasn't like me (old, thinking of the past) or related to him or the environs in which he was raised.

It was mild and kept me interested because I'm old and like thinking of the past. The writing is clear, with an easy view between those words to his life's career. he should have thanked his mama a little bit more. This may be exactly what Russell Baker was trying for - to invoke in his readers that which he felt, that maybe.just maybe. Full of family foibles and characters, I grew so homesick for my parents - who tried so hard and were thanked so little. This reminded me of books my mom would read to my dad either on drives or quiet nights at home when everyone was settling in at home that hour or so before we all took ourselves to our beds. He is, in my opinion, a precious national resource, and as long as he does not get his own television show, America will remain stronger than Russia.' (1991, xii) Neil Postman, in the preface to Conscientious Objections, describes Baker as ' like some fourth century citizen of Rome who is amused and intrigued by the Empire's collapse but who still cares enough to mock the stupidities that are hastening its end.

In 1993, Baker began hosting the PBS television series Masterpiece Theatre. His 1983 autobiography, Growing Up earned him a second Pulitzer. “ The only thing I was fit for was to be a writer,” wrote Baker, “ and this notion rested solely on my suspicion that I would never be fit for real work, and that writing didn’t require any.” In 1979, Baker received his first Pulitzer Prize for distinguished commentary in his “ Observer” column for the New York Times (1962 to 1998). Baker managed to get himself into Johns Hopkins University, where he studied journalism.īaker’s wit as a humorist has been compared with that of Mark Twain.

His father died early on and his hard-working mother reared him and his sisters during the Great Depression. On August 14, 1925, US journalist, humorist and biographer Russell Baker was born in Loudoun County, Virginia.

Growing Up by Russell Baker