cover image The Good Times

The Good Times

Russell Baker. William Morrow & Company, $19.95 (0pp) ISBN 978-0-688-06170-8

Following his bestselling, Pulitzer Prize-winning Growing Up , 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. BOMC alternate. (June)