Two-time Pulitzer Prize winner, Baker is the author of the memoirs Growing Up (1982) and The Good Times (1989), as well as such nonfiction collections as An American in Washington (1961), So This Is Depravity (1980), Conscientious Objections (1991), and Looking Back: Heroes, Rascals, and Other Icons of the American Imagination (2002). Baker also edited the anthologies The Norton Book of Light Verse (1986) and Russell Baker’s Book of American Humor (1993), and wrote the young adult novel The Upside-Down Man (1977).
Baker started his career in journalism at the Baltimore Sun in 1947, and was briefly that paper’s London Bureau Chief. He then became the Washington correspondent for The New York Times, covering Congress, the military, and the State Department during the Dwight D. Eisenhower and John F. Kennedy Administrations. But Baker is best known for his work as a long-time columnist for The New York Times, from 1962 to 1998. He also hosted the PBS television program “Masterpiece Theater” and wrote the book for the musical play “Home Again, Home Again” (1979).
Baker was born in Morrisonville, Virginia, raised in Baltimore, educated at Baltimore City College and Johns Hopkins University, and enlisted in the Navy in WWII (but never served overseas). He lived in DC from 1954 through 1974, then returned to the Mid-Atlantic after his retirement in 1998, settling not far from the place of his birth, in Leesburg, VA.