Kevin Baker | |
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![]() Baker in 2015 | |
Born | 1958 (age 64–65) [1] Englewood, New Jersey, U.S. |
Occupation |
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Education | Columbia University |
Genre | Realistic fiction, historical fiction, Nonfiction |
Website | |
kevinbaker |
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. [5] In 2009 appeared on C-SPAN's Washington Journal and The Colbert Report , to discuss the Obama presidency. [6]
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 [7] and the 2003 American Book Award. [8] 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. [9]
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, [5] and a regular contributor to Politico.com, The New Republic, The New York Times, and The New York Times Book Review .
Rudolph William Louis Giuliani is an American politician and lawyer who served as the 107th mayor of New York City from 1994 to 2001. He previously served as the United States Associate Attorney General from 1981 to 1983 and the United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York from 1983 to 1989.
Dreamland or Dream Land may refer to:
Richard Powers is an American novelist whose works explore the effects of modern science and technology. His novel The Echo Maker won the 2006 National Book Award for Fiction. He has also won many other awards over the course of his career, including a MacArthur Fellowship. As of 2023, Powers has published thirteen novels and has taught at the University of Illinois and Stanford University. He won the 2019 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction for The Overstory.
James Fenimore Cooper was an American writer of the first half of the 19th century, whose historical romances depicting colonial and indigenous characters from the 17th to the 19th centuries brought him fame and fortune. He lived much of his boyhood and the last fifteen years of life in Cooperstown, New York, which was founded by his father William Cooper on property that he owned. Cooper became a member of the Episcopal Church shortly before his death and contributed generously to it. He attended Yale University for three years, where he was a member of the Linonian Society.
Sir Harold Matthew Evans was a British-American journalist and writer. In his career in his native Britain, he was editor of The Sunday Times from 1967 to 1981, and its sister title The Times for a year from 1981, before being forced out of the latter post by Rupert Murdoch. While at The Sunday Times, he led the newspaper's campaign to seek compensation for mothers who had taken the morning sickness drug thalidomide, which led to their children having severely deformed limbs.
The Devil's Advocate is a 1997 American supernatural horror film directed by Taylor Hackford, written by Jonathan Lemkin and Tony Gilroy, and starring Keanu Reeves, Al Pacino, and Charlize Theron. Based on Andrew Neiderman's 1990 novel of the same name, it is about a gifted young Florida lawyer (Reeves) invited to New York City to work for a major firm. As his wife (Theron) becomes haunted by frightening visions, the lawyer slowly begins to realize the owner of the firm (Pacino) is not what he appears to be, and is in fact the Devil.
The Leatherstocking Tales is a series of five novels by American writer James Fenimore Cooper, set in the eighteenth-century era of development in the primarily former Iroquois areas in central New York. Each novel features Natty Bumppo, a frontiersman known to European-American settlers as "Leatherstocking", "The Pathfinder", and "the trapper". Native Americans call him "Deerslayer", "La Longue Carabine", and "Hawkeye".
Brian Wood is an American writer, illustrator, and graphic designer, known for his work in comic books, television and video games. His noted comic book work includes the series DMZ, Demo, Northlanders, The Massive, Marvel Comics' The X-Men, and Star Wars. His web series work includes adaptations of his own short stories from the comics series The Massive and Conan the Barbarian for Geek & Sundry and YouTube, and his video game work includes three years on staff at Rockstar Games, co-writing 1979 Revolution: Black Friday and story contributions to Aliens: Fireteam Elite. His television work includes pilot scripts for AMC, Amazon Studios, and Sonar Entertainment. He is a contributing writer on HBO Max's DMZ adaptation of his own work.
Jessica Lurie is an American composer, performance artist and woodwind player, originally hailing from Seattle and now living in Brooklyn, New York.
Paradise Alley is a 1978 American sports drama film written, directed by, and starring Sylvester Stallone. The film tells the story of three Italian American brothers in Hell's Kitchen in the 1940s who become involved in professional wrestling. Kevin Conway, Anne Archer, Joe Spinell, Armand Assante, Lee Canalito, Frank McRae, Joyce Ingalls, and Tom Waits co-star in the film.
Luna Park is the name of multiple amusement parks.
The Society of American Historians Prize for Historical Fiction, formerly known as the James Fenimore Cooper Prize, is a biennial award given for the best Historical American fiction by the Society of American Historians. It is awarded in the odd-numbered years.
Dreamland is a 1999 novel by American author Kevin Baker, published by HarperCollins Publishers. It centers on the colorful underworld of turn-of-the-century New York City, with much of the action taking place at Dreamland amusement park in Coney Island.
Stephen J. Powers is an American contemporary artist and muralist. He is also known by the name ESPO, and Steve Powers. He lives in New York City.
Danijel Žeželj is a Croatian comic book artist, animator, painter and illustrator and author of a number of graphic novels.
Coney Island has been featured in novels, films, television shows, cartoons, and theatrical plays.
Kenneth Womack is an American writer, literary critic, public speaker, and music historian, particularly focusing on the cultural influence of the Beatles. He is the author of the bestselling Solid State: The Story of Abbey Road and the End of the Beatles and John Lennon, 1980: The Last Days in the Life.
May Singhi Breen was an American composer, arranger, and ukulelist, who became known as "The Original Ukulele Lady." Her work in the music publishing business spanned several decades. Breen was the driving force in getting the ukulele accepted as a musical instrument by the American Federation of Musicians. In 2000, she became the first woman inducted into the Ukulele Hall of Fame.
Afloat and Ashore is a nautical fiction novel by James Fenimore Cooper first published in 1844. Set in 1796–1804, the novel follows the maritime adventures of Miles Wallingford Jr., the son of wealthy New York landowners who chooses to go to sea after the death of his parents. The novel ends abruptly part way through, and is followed by what critic Harold D. Langely called a "necessary" sequel which resolves many thematic and plot elements. The novel is partially autobiographical, based in part on Cooper's own experiences as a sailor, and is his first full-length novel to fully employ a first-person narrative.
Grady Hendrix is an American author, journalist, public speaker, and screenwriter known for his best-selling 2014 novel Horrorstör. Hendrix lives in Manhattan and was one of the founders of the New York Asian Film Festival.