There's a Country in My Cellar - Softcover

Baker, Russell

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0380714515 ISBN 13: 9780380714513

Publisher: Avon Books, 1991

Synopsis

Pulitzer Prize-winning and bestselling author Russell Baker, one of America's most beloved social commentators, compiles a collection of his best New York Times columns. Contains all-new material in which Baker details episodes from his life--a follow-up to Baker's bestselling The Good Times.

About this title

From Publishers Weekly:

Not necessarily the best but, rather, approximately 150 of some of the best of Baker's 3800 "Observer" columns (totaling nearly three million words) that have appeared in the New York Times since July 16, 1962. They deal mostly with money, nonsense, places, roots, the New Age, events of 1968, television (Baker keeps his set in the cellar), the gourmet revolution and the low state of the mother tongue. A long piece, "The Becoming Looseness of Doom," is adapted from an address to a college graduating class, and a few personal columns reveal "a somewhat staid, conservative fellow gone a bit long in the tooth and, therefore, starting to believe that it was a better world when he was a youth." The essays should be read a few at a time, over weeks or months; although many of them seem as valid today as they did 10, 20 or 30 years ago, several have dated. But the collection will please Baker's devoted fans and may induce others to subscribe to the Times in order to keep up with his latest skeptical sallies.
Copyright 1990 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal:

The acid test of good journalism is whether or not it will bear re-reading in book form. Baker passes the test with flying colors. No one can save all the old copies of the New York Times, so how pleasant it is that Baker has selected (on principles explained in his introduction, which commend themselves) 137 of 3800 or so of his "Observer" columns, written for the Times between 1963 and 1989. It is futile to attempt to identify his themes, so various are they. But the collection makes a homogeneous book in a way that does not always result from the gathering together of pieces written over a span of years. It is evident that Baker's style has changed, as authors' styles are apt to do when they no longer fear the public and can discard the impersonal manner of anonymity and write freely. Highly recommended for all public libraries. Previewed in Prepub Alert, LJ 6/15/90.
- A.J. Anderson, Graduate Sch. of Library & Information Science, Simmons Coll., Boston
Copyright 1990 Reed Business Information, Inc.

About this edition

• Publisher: Avon Books
• Publication date: 1991
• ISBN 10: 0380714515
• ISBN 13: 9780380714513
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 432