The Good Times
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4.6 • 7 Ratings
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- $11.99
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- $11.99
Publisher Description
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
Customer Reviews
Maybe It Should Have been Called The Great Times
Baker is the journalist I always hoped I could be but never was. His writing in the "The Good Times" is fluid and moves easily across the page and in so doing touches the reader in many ways. He is funny, admirable, self deprecating, provocative and able to dissect the human condition as well as a surgeon would with a scalpel. His front row view into history offers new insights into the character of many world leaders and encounters with the likes of Eisenhower, Nixon, JFK, and the media greats of the twentieth century. By his own admission, Baker was never very good at anything but boy, he could write. Now I know why he is called one of the top 50 biographical writers in the country.