| Kevin Baker | |
| Birth Place: | Englewood, New Jersey, U.S. |
| Genre: | Realistic fiction, historical fiction, Nonfiction |
| Education: | Columbia University |
Kevin Baker (born 1958) is an American novelist, political commentator, and journalist.
Baker was born in Englewood, New Jersey,[1] and grew up in Rockport, Massachusetts.[2] [3] As a youth, he worked on the local newspaper Gloucester Daily Times,[1] covering high school sports, as well as town meetings and other civic affairs. He graduated from Columbia University in 1980,[1] with a major in political science.[2]
In 1993, Baker's first book, Sometimes You See it Coming (1993),[1] a contemporary baseball novel loosely based on the life of Ty Cobb, was published.[2]
He was the chief historical researcher on Harold Evans’s illustrated history of the United States, The American Century (1998).[4] He was a columnist ("In the News") for American Heritage magazine from 1998 to 2007. In 2009 appeared on C-SPAN's Washington Journal and The Colbert Report, to discuss the Obama presidency.[5]
Baker is the author of the City of Fire trilogy, published by HarperCollins, which consists of the following historical novels: Dreamland (1998); the bestselling Paradise Alley (2002); and Strivers Row (2006). The middle volume of the trilogy won the 2003 James Fenimore Cooper Prize for Best Historical Fiction[6] and the 2003 American Book Award.[7] Paradise Alley was also chosen by bestselling Angela's Ashes author, Frank McCourt, as a Today show book club selection.
In 2009, he wrote Luna Park, a graphic novel illustrated by Croatian artist Danijel Žeželj.[8]
A writer of over 200 newspaper and magazine articles, Baker was the recipient of a 2017 Guggenheim fellowship for non-fiction.
Baker lives in New York City, where he is a contributing editor to and bi-monthly columnist for Harper's Magazine,[9] and a regular contributor to Politico.com, The New Republic, The New York Times, and The New York Times Book Review.