Kevin Baker

Kevin Baker is a New York-based writer of historical fiction. His latest book is The Big Crowd.

Kevin Baker is the author of five novels, most recently The Big Crowd (Houghton Mifflin, 2013), set mainly in postwar New York and based closely on the greatest unsolved murder in mob history. He is currently at work on a history of New York City baseball for Pantheon. His previous works include the “City of Fire” trilogy set in New York’s past: Dreamland, Strivers Row, and Paradise Alley, which was a New York Times bestseller and the winner of the American Book Award.   He is also the author or co-author of a contemporary novel, a graphic novel, two works of American history, and an as-told-to memoir by Reggie Jackson, Becoming Mr. October. Baker is a contributing editor at Harper’s magazine, a frequent contributor to The New York Times, The New York Daily News and many other periodicals, and a member of the board of the Society of American Historians. He was born in New Jersey, grew up in Massachusetts, graduated from Columbia University, and lives on the Upper West Side of New York with his wife, Ellen, and their cat, Maisie.

Kevin Baker appears in the following:

100 Years of 100 Things: New York Baseball

Monday, July 29, 2024

Kevin Baker takes us through the past hundred years of baseball in NYC, as listeners share their oral histories.

Baseball's Origin Story is a New York Story, and Vice Versa

Thursday, March 28, 2024

Baseball was created in New York, and in turn it also helped create New York. In his new book, The New York Game: Baseball and the Rise of a New City, author Kevin Baker makes the cas...

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A Rush To Editorial Judgment, Averted

Friday, June 26, 2020

How staffers at the Atlanta Journal-Constitution stopped themselves from criminalizing a victim of police brutality. 

New York: A Tale of 2 Cities

Monday, July 02, 2018

Kevin Baker, looks at how New York City has sacrificed the unique people the city has historically been known for being home to in the name of high-end development. 

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The Case for Blue-State Secession

Wednesday, March 15, 2017

Why blue states should secede from the Union in a "Bluexit."

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Glamour Girls, Murder, and the Mayor

Monday, November 24, 2014

WNYC
What lurked behind William O'Dwyer's charmed life?
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Us Now

Wednesday, October 27, 2010

Novelist, historian and author Kevin Baker looks back over the 400 years of United States history while discussing his new book, America The Story of Us: An Illustrated History

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