UNITED STATES AUTHOR · SOCIAL LIFE AND CUSTOMS · WIT AND HUMOR
Russell Baker
Russell Wayne Baker (August 14, 1925 – January 21, 2019) was an American journalist, narrator, writer of Pulitzer Prize-winning satirical commentary and self-critical prose, and author of the Pulitzer Prize-winning autobiography Growing Up (1983). He was a columnist for The New York Times for 36 years, and hosted eleven seasons of the PBS show Masterpiece Theatre.
Have drawn your name in the air with a sparkler on the Fourth of July.
— from Growing Up
Most acclaimed
Growing Up
As war drags on, Beliers Priory in East Barsetshire, home to Sir Harry and Lady Waring, becomes a convalescent hospital for soldiers as well as home to their niece Leslie, and Capt. Noel and Lydia Merton from West Barsetshire. In the meantime, Philip Winter meets Leslie, their relationship developing subsequent problems which are finally resolved. Romance proceeds apace "downstairs" as well as "upstairs", where a trio of followers is pursuing Selina, the housemaid, with eventually a most suitable conclusion. But the stationmaster whose son is a POW in Germany, Tommy Needham's amputated arm, and everyone's uncertainty about absent friends and relatives form sombre countrepoints to the general attitude of "soldiering on". As Lydia observes: they are "growing up."
Laughing Space
A Fuller Explanation of Original Sin - poem by Isaac Asimov and Janet Asimov [as by Isaac Asimov and Janet O. Jeppson] Et Tu - poem by John Stallings Creation - poem by L. Sprague de Camp Stag Night, Paleolithic - poem by Ogden Nash An Epicurean Fragment - poem by Robert Hillyer Spaced Out - short story by Russell Baker The Coffin Cure - short story by Alan E. Nourse Silenzia - short story by Alan Nelson The Agony of Defeat - short story by Jack C. Haldeman, II Epitaph on Rigel XII - poem by Sherwood Springer Epitaph on Ceres - poem by Sherwood Springer The Snowball Effect - short story by Katherine MacLean Pâté de Foie Gras - short story by Isaac Asimov The Available Data on the Worp Reaction - short story by Lion Miller Imaginary Numbers in a Real Garden - poem by Gerald Jonas The Mathenauts - short story by Norman Kagan Coffee Break - short story by D. F. Jones Putzi - short story by Ludwig Bemelmans All Things Come to Those Who Weight - short story by Robert Grossbach Derm Fool - short story by Theodore Sturgeon The Heart on the Other Side - short story by George Gamow Blackmail - short story by Fred Hoyle A Slight Miscalculation - short story by Ben Bova A Subway Named Mobius - short story by A. J. Deutsch A Sinister Metamorphosis - short story by Russell Baker Something Up There Likes Me - short story by Alfred Bester A Prize for Edie - short story by J. F. Bone Isaac Asimov's "The Caves of Steel" - poem by Randall Garrett (variant of Parodies Tossed: Isaac Asimov's "The Caves of Steel" 1956) Neptune - poem by Sansoucy Kathenor [as by Sansoucy North] Pluto - poem by Sansoucy Kathenor [as by Sansoucy North] Jury-Rig - short story by Avram Davidson Protection - short story by Robert Sheckley The Self-Priming Solid-State Electronic Chicken - short story by Jon Lucas (variant of The Self-Priming, Solid-State Electronic Chicken) The Night He Cried - short story by Fritz Leiber The Big Pat Boom - short story by Damon Knight The Adventure of the Solitary Engineer - short story by John M. Ford Report on "Grand Central Terminal" - short story by Leo Szilard Ad Astra, Al - poem by Mary W. Stanton They'll Do It Every Time - short story by Cam Thornley No Homelike Place - short story by Dian Girard (variant of No Home-Like Place) Simworthy's Circus - short story by Larry T. Shaw A Growing Concern - short story by Arnie Bateman The Vilbar Party - short story by Evelyn E. Smith A Pestilence of Psychoanalysts - short story by Janet Asimov [as by J. O. Jeppson] Death of a Foy - short story by Isaac Asimov The One Thing Lacking - poem by Isaac Asimov The Merchant of Stratford - short story by Frank Ramirez The Wheel of Time - short story by Robert Arthur Quit Zoomin' Those Hands Through the Air - short story by Jack Finney The Adventure of the Global Traveler or: The Global Consequences of How the Reichenbach Falls into the Wells of Iniquitie - short story by Anne Lear Pebble in Time - short story by Avram Davidson and Cynthia Goldstone Ahead of the Joneses - short story by Al Sarrantonio The Pinch Hitters - short story by George Alec Effinger (variant of The Pinch-Hitters) Swift Completion - poem by Brad Cahoon A Skald's Lament - poem by L. Sprague de Camp The Stunning Science Fiction Caper - short story by Thomas N. Scortia [as by Gerald Macdow] I, Claude - short story by Charles Beaumont and Chad Oliver Out of Control - short story by Raylyn Moore Slush - short story by K. J. Snow An Unsolicited Submission - poem by Deborah Crawford Judo and the Art of Self-Government - short story by Kevin O'Donnell, Jr. Lulu - novelette by Clifford D. Simak The Splendid Source - short story by Richard Matheson MS. Found in a Chinese Fortune Cookie - short story by C. M. Kornbluth The Several Murders of Roger Ackroyd - short story by Barry N. Malzberg The Critique of Impure Reason - novelette by Poul Anderson One Rejection Too Many - short story by Patricia Nurse Bug-Getter - short story by Reginald Bretnor [as by R. Bretnor] The Last Gothic - short story by Jon L. Breen A Benefactor of Humanity - short story by James T. Farrell The Silver Eggheads (Excerpt) - short fiction by Fritz Leiber Adverbs - poem by E. Y. Harburg Dry Spell - short story by Bill Pronzini The Odds-On Favorite - poem by E. Y. Harburg MS Fnd in a Lbry - short story by Hal Draper
Looking back
1933
"From his youthful days as a delivery boy for William Randolph Hearst's Baltimore newspapers through his many years as a journalist and commentator, Russell Baker has been a keen observer of American politics and culture. Now, in these eleven essays, all originally published in The New York Review of Books, he looks back on a group of iconic public figures from his own past.". "Here are presidents - Lyndon Johnson feuding with Robert F. Kennedy over the legacy of John F. Kennedy, and Richard Nixon in his grasping, spectral exile. Here are would-be presidents - Eugene V. Debs and Barry Goldwater, "gentlemen fallen among brutes," and Hearst himself, feuding with Theodore and then Franklin Roosevelt. Here too are those who set their sights on something besides the presidency: Martin Luther King, in Baker's view "probably the one indisputably great American of the century's second half," Joe DiMaggio, living a life in tragic contrast to his own myth, and the disputatious memoirists of The New Yorker's glory days. And tucked in are glimpses of Marilyn Monroe and Mary Todd Lincoln, a bearded lady and a nudist queen."--BOOK JACKET.