Kevin Baker (author)

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 (1999); 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 Harper's Magazine^[5] and a regular contributor to The New York Times and The New York Times Book Review.