This image is the cover for the book Good Times

Good Times

A “superb [and] often hilarious” memoir of a life in journalism, from the Pulitzer Prize–winning author of Growing Up (The New York Times Book Review).

“Baker here recalls his years at the Baltimore Sun, where, on ‘starvation wages,’ he worked on the police beat, as a rewrite man, feature writer and White House correspondent. Sent to London in 1953 to report on the coronation, he spent the happiest year of his life there as an innocent abroad. Moving to the New York Times and becoming a ‘two-fisted drinker,’ he covered the Senate and the national political campaigns of 1956 and 1960, and, just as he was becoming bored with routine reporting and the obligation to keep judgments out of his stories, was offered the opportunity to write his own op-ed page column, ‘The Observer.’ With its lively stories about journalists, Washington politicians and topical scandals, the book will delight Baker’s devotees—and significantly expand their already vast number.” —Publishers Weekly

“Aspiring writers will chuckle over Baker’s first, horrible day on police beat, his panicked interview with Evelyn Waugh, and his arrival at Queen Elizabeth’s coronation in top hat, tails, and brown-bag lunch.” —Library Journal

“A wonderful book.” —Kirkus Reviews

Russell Baker

Russell Baker has been charming readers for years with his astute political commentary and biting cerebral wit. The noted journalist, humorist, essayist, and biographer has written or edited seventeen books, and was the author of the nationally syndicated “Observer” column for the New York Times from 1962 to 1998. Called by Robert Sherrill of the Washington Post Book Word, “the supreme satirist of this half-century,” Baker is most famous for turning the daily gossip of most newspapers into the stuff of laugh-out-loud literature. John Skow of Time described Baker’s work as “funny, but full of the pain and absurdity of the age . . . he can write with a hunting strain of melancholy, with delight, or . . . with shame or outrage.”

Baker received his first Pulitzer Prize for distinguished commentary in 1979, in recognition of his “Observer” column. Baker received his second Pulitzer Prize in 1983 for his autobiography, Growing Up (1983). In addition to his regular column and numerous books, Baker also edited the anthologies, The Norton Book of Light Verse (1986) and Russell Baker’s Book of American Humor (1993). From 1993 to 2004 he was the regular host of the PBS television series Masterpiece Theatre. Baker regularly contributed to national periodicals such as the New York Times Magazine, Sports Illustrated, Saturday Evening Post, and McCalls. One of his columns, “How to Hypnotize Yourself into Forgetting the Vietnam War,” was dramatized and filmed by Eli Wallach for PBS.

Diversion Books