Russell Baker is a former columnist and correspondent for The New York Times and The Baltimore Sun. His books include The Good Times, Growing Up, and Looking Back.
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A Very Wretched Relationship
April 4, 2013
Ike and Dick: Portrait of a Strange Political Marriage
by Jeffrey Frank
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Visitors
February 21, 2013
Nature Wars: The Incredible Story of How Wildlife Comebacks Turned Backyards into Battlegrounds
by Jim Sterba
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The Election—II
November 8, 2012
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The Master of Hate
August 16, 2012
Enemies: A History of the FBI
by Tim Weiner
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Smiley Wins Again
April 5, 2012
Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy a film directed by Tomas Alfredson
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Overgrown Boys
January 12, 2012
J. Edgar a film directed by Clint Eastwood
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Anarchists & Capitalists
October 13, 2011
Emma Goldman: Revolution as a Way of Life
by Vivian Gornick
The President and the Assassin: McKinley, Terror, and Empire at the Dawn of the American Century
by Scott Miller
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The Charms of Eleanor
June 9, 2011
Franklin and Eleanor: An Extraordinary Marriage
by Hazel Rowley
Eleanor Roosevelt: Transformative First Lady
by Maurine H. Beasley
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The Real Reagan
March 10, 2011
My Father at 100
by Ron Reagan
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A Genius for Contempt
November 11, 2010
Prejudices
by H.L. Mencken
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Decline But Not Fall
September 30, 2010
Morning Miracle: Inside The Washington Post: A Great Newspaper Fights for Its Life
by Dave Kindred
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A Bad Morning at The New York Times
April 29, 2010
My Times in Black and White: Race and Power at the New York Times
by Gerald M. Boyd, with an afterword by Robin D. Stone
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Ted
November 19, 2009
True Compass: A Memoir
by Edward M. Kennedy
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A Heroic Historian on Heroes
June 11, 2009
American Heroes: Profiles of Men and Women Who Shaped Early America
by Edmund S. Morgan
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A Revolutionary President
February 12, 2009
FDR: The First Hundred Days
by Anthony J. Badger
The Defining Moment: FDR’s Hundred Days and the Triumph of Hope
by Jonathan Alter
Nothing to Fear: FDR’s Inner Circle and the Hundred Days That Created Modern America
by Adam Cohen
Traitor to His Class: The Privileged Life and Radical Presidency of Franklin Delano Roosevelt
by H.W. Brands
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How They Blew Up the L.A. Times
November 20, 2008
American Lightning: Terror, Mystery, Movie-Making, and the Crime of the Century
by Howard Blum
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A Fateful Election
November 6, 2008
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Not So Dangerous Liaisons
July 17, 2008
My Three Fathers: And the Elegant Deceptions of My Mother, Susan Mary Alsop
by William S. Patten
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Condi and the Boys
April 3, 2008
Condoleezza Rice: An American Life
by Elisabeth Bumiller
Dead Certain: The Presidency of George W. Bush
by Robert Draper
The Confidante: Condoleezza Rice and the Creation of the Bush Legacy
by Glenn Kessler
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The Conservative Betrayed
October 25, 2007
The Prince of Darkness: 50 Years of Reporting in Washington
by Robert D. Novak
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Goodbye to Newspapers?
August 16, 2007
When the Press Fails: Political Power and the New Media from Iraq to Katrina
by W. Lance Bennett, Regina G. Lawrence, and Steven Livingston
American Carnival: Journalism Under Siege in an Age of New Media
by Neil Henry
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‘Dutch’
April 12, 2007
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Reconstructing Ronald Reagan
March 1, 2007
Ronald Reagan: Fate, Freedom, and the Making of History
by John Patrick Diggins
Reagan: A Life in Letters
edited by Kiron K. Skinner, Annelise Anderson, and Martin Anderson, with a foreword by George P. Shultz
Transforming America: Politics and Culture During the Reagan Years
by Robert M. Collins
The Reagan Imprint: Ideas in American Foreign Policy from the Collapse of Communism to the War on Terror
by John Arquilla
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The Wealth of Loneliness
November 2, 2006
Mellon: An American Life
by David Cannadine
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Glimpses
August 10, 2006
Let Me Finish
by Roger Angell
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Talking It Up
May 11, 2006
Conversation: A History of a Declining Art
by Stephen Miller
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Baker’s ‘World’
January 12, 2006
The World on Sunday: Graphic Art in Joseph Pulitzer’s Newspaper (1898–1911)
by Nicholson Baker and Margaret Brentano
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The Entertainer
November 3, 2005
Buffalo Bill’s America: William Cody and the Wild West Show
by Louis S. Warren
The Colonel and Little Missie: Buffalo Bill, Annie Oakley, and the Beginnings of Superstardom in America
by Larry McMurtry
Buffalo Bill in Bologna: The Americanization of the World,1869–1922
by Robert W. Rydell and Rob Kroes
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Fathers and Son
April 28, 2005
Omaha Blues: A Memory Loop
by Joseph Lelyveld
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Der Führer’s Face
November 18, 2004
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A Great Reporter at Large
November 18, 2004
Just Enough Liebling: Classic Work by the Legendary New Yorker Writer
by A.J. Liebling, with an introduction by David Remnick
The Telephone Booth Indian
by A.J. Liebling, with an introduction by Luc Sante
Between Meals: An Appetite for Paris
by A.J. Liebling, with an introduction by James Salter
The Sweet Science
by A.J. Liebling, with a foreword by Robert Anasi
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The Election and America’s Future
November 4, 2004
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Death in Battle?
October 21, 2004
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Troublemaker
August 12, 2004
Losing America
by Robert C. Byrd
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John D. Rockefeller Jr.: An Exchange
July 15, 2004
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In Bush’s Washington
May 13, 2004
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Back to Normalcy!
February 12, 2004
Warren G. Harding
by John W. Dean
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On Not Rocking the Boat
December 18, 2003
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The Awful Truth
November 6, 2003
The Great Unraveling: Losing Our Way in the New Century
by Paul Krugman
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An American Family
June 12, 2003
Memoirs
by David Rockefeller
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Thus Spake Henry
January 16, 2003
The Skeptic: A Life of H.L. Mencken
by Terry Teachout
The Diary of H.L. Mencken
edited by Charles A. Fecher
My Life as Author and Editor
by H.L. Mencken, edited and with an introduction by Jonathan Yardley
Disturber of the Peace: The Life of H.L. Mencken
by William Manchester
Mencken: A Life
by Fred Hobson
In Defense of Marion: The Love of Marion Bloom and H.L. Mencken
edited by Edward A. Martin
The Vintage Mencken
edited by Alistair Cooke
The Impossible H.L. Mencken: A Selection of His Best Newspaper Stories
edited by Marion Elizabeth Rodgers
Mencken and Sara: A Life in Letters: The Private Correspondence of H.L. Mencken and Sara Haardt
edited by Marion Elizabeth Rodgers
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The Shrinking News
December 19, 2002
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The Non-Conformist
October 24, 2002
Worth the Fighting For: A Memoir
by John McCain
Citizen McCain
by Elizabeth Drew
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What Else Is News?
July 18, 2002
The Editor: How I Saved the New York Times, the Washington Post, and the Los Angeles Times from Dullness and Complacency
by Jim Bellows
Into the Buzzsaw:Leading Journalists Expose the Myth of a Free Press
edited by Kristina Borjesson, with a foreword by Gore Vidal
The News About the News:American Journalism in Peril
by Leonard Downie Jr. and Robert G. Kaiser
Media Unlimited: How the Torrent of Images and Sounds Overwhelms Our Lives
by Todd Gitlin
Bias: A CBS Insider Exposes How the Media Distort the News
by Bernard Goldberg
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The Performer
April 11, 2002
Theodore Rex
by Edmund Morris
Theodore Roosevelt
by Louis Auchincloss
The Selected Letters of Theodore Roosevelt
edited by H.W. Brands
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Out of Step with the World
September 20, 2001
McSorley’s Wonderful Saloon
by Joseph Mitchell
My Ears Are Bent
by Joseph Mitchell
Up in the Old Hotel
by Joseph Mitchell
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Mr. Right
May 17, 2001
Before the Storm: Barry Goldwater and the Unmaking of the American Consensus
Rick Perlstein
Suburban Warriors Lisa McGirr
Right-Wing Populism in America: Too Close for Comfort Chip Berlet and Matthew N. Lyons
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Where Has Joe Gone?
November 16, 2000
Joe DiMaggio: The Hero’s Life
by Richard Ben Cramer
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A Boy’s Life
August 10, 2000
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The Love Boat
March 23, 2000
About Town: The New Yorker and the World It Made
by Ben Yagodam
Letters from the Editor: The New Yorker’s Harold Ross
edited by Thomas Kunkel
Remembering Mr. Shawn’s New Yorker: The Invisible Art of Editing
by Ved Mehta
Gone: The Last Days of The New Yorker
by Renata Adler
Here But Not Here
by Lillian Ross
Here at The New Yorker
by Brendan Gill
The Years with Ross
by James Thurber
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Cruel and Usual
January 20, 2000
Proximity to Death
by William S. McFeely
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Only in America
October 7, 1999
Harp Song for a Radical: The Life and Times of Eugene Victor Debs
by Marguerite Young, edited and with an introduction by Charles Ruas
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Decline and Fall
February 18, 1999
Part of Our Time: Some Ruins and Monuments of the Thirties
by Murray Kempton
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The Exile
July 16, 1998
Nixon in Winter
by Monica Crowley
Abuse of Power: The New Nixon Tapes
edited by Stanley I. Kutler
Nixon’s Economy: Booms, Busts, Dollars, and Votes
by Allen J. Matusow
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Bravest and Best
April 9, 1998
Pillar of Fire: America in the King Years, 1963-1965 by Taylor Branch
The Last Crusade: Martin Luther King, Jr., the FBI, and the Poor People’s Campaign by Gerald D. McKnight
But for Birmingham: The Local and National Movements in the Civil Rights Struggle by Glenn T. Eskew
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Feud
October 23, 1997
Mutual Contempt: Lyndon Johnson, Robert Kennedy, and the Feud That Defined a Decade by Jeff Shesol
Lyndon B. Johnson’s Vietnam Papers: A Documentary Collection edited by David M. Barrett
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Secrets of the Keeper of Secrets
November 29, 2011
Clint Eastwood is now eighty-one, a mellow age that tends to breed a gentle tolerance, if not sardonic forgiveness, for life’s brutes and rogues. This may explain the curious lack of menace in the J. Edgar Hoover he conjures up in J. Edgar, his low-voltage cinematic speculation on the character of America’s most famous cop. J. Edgar Hoover without menace is like Boris Karloff without bolts in his head. Not an old softie, to be sure, but Eastwood’s Hoover—though a sly, neurotic, and occasionally vicious bureaucrat—is scarcely a patch on the real-life Hoover who, as creator and director of the FBI from 1935 to 1972, once lurked in the nightmares of almost everyone with an interest in government and many more who simply went through life feeling guilty.