Growing Up (Signet) [Paperback]

Russell Baker (Author)

Book Description

Series: Signet | Publication Date: June 2, 1992

This is Russell Baker's story of growing up in America between the world wars--in the backwoods mountains of Virginia, in a New Jersey commuter town, and finally in the Depression-shadowed urban landscape of Baltimore.

Editorial Reviews

From the Publisher

7 1.5-hour cassettes --This text refers to the Audio Cassette edition.

Product Details

• Paperback: 352 pages
• Publisher: Signet (June 2, 1992)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0451168380
• ISBN-13: 978-0451168382
• Product Dimensions: 6.7 x 4.2 x 1.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 6.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.1 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (41 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #30,132 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #1 in Books > 4-for-3 Books > Biographies & Memoirs > Professionals & Academics > Journalists
  • #4 in Books > 4-for-3 Books > Parenting & Families > Parenting > Babies & Toddlers > Child Development
  • #40 in Books > 4-for-3 Books > Parenting & Families > General

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

29 of 29 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The best..., July 10, 2003

By 

Peggy Vincent "author and reader" (Oakland, CA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Growing Up (Plume) (Paperback)

Russell Baker, who won the Pulitzer Prize in 1979, deserves to be a national treasure on the basis of this book alone. It traces his youth in rural Virginia, from the death of his father when he was only five through his growing up years between the wars. The rest of the book is a paean to his mother, a strong-willed optimist who never accepted defeat as an alternative to success. Her unfailing faith in the talents of her young son were not misplaced. This is an iconic and magical piece of literature, a story of courage and love, of the bonds of family in spite of tension and disagreement.
Wonderful both as a story and as a piece of writing.

30 of 34 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars From hard times to the "New York Times", May 12, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Growing Up (Plume) (Paperback)

Growing Up, is Russel Baker's autobiography that describes his atypical life. Starting from humble beginnings in the mountains of West Virginia, Baker weathered a childhood that spanned the entire Depression, and later found success as a big city newspaperman. What was most enjoyable about this book was its genuine authenticity. Baker rattles off no frightening or boring statistics about the Depression. Rather, he writes about life as he saw it, progressively maturing as the book flows along. This, one would argue, is this book's most appealing quality. Baker never comes out to draw attention to himself at any time during the book. He lets the reader know if there was any particular activity that he was adept at, and surprisingly, those passages were surprisingly rare throughout the book. An enthralling read, no, a good, solid read, yes. Go ahead, check it out.

18 of 19 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Heartwrenching and Beautiful!, June 6, 2004

By A Customer

This review is from: Growing Up (Signet) (Paperback)

One evening when I was eleven I brought home a short "composition" on my summer vacation which the teacher had graded with an A. Reading it with her own schoolteacher's eye, my mother agreed that it was top drawer seventh grade prose and complimented me. Nothing mores was said. But a new idea had taken root in her mind. Halfway through dinner she interrupted the conversation.

"Buddy", she said, "maybe you could be a writer".-Russell Baker from Growing Up

It is as a tribute to his mother that Russell Baker, one of America's leading wordsmiths and humorists, wrote Growing Up, his 1982 account of doing just that during the depression. The memoir one him his second Pulitzer Prize (his first he won 4 years prior for his New York Times "Observer" Column). The book itself is very well-written (as is pretty much everything Baker's ever done) and has dashes of humor throughout it. Yet overall. the book ranks as a touching tribute to the mama who raised him, pushed him when he needed pushing and ultimately encouraged him to make something of himself.

"Lord how I hated those words", Baker writes at the conclusion of chapter 1 of Growing up, referring of course to "make something of yourself". Young Russell wasn't a bad boy per se. He was a decent young man who had the same habit that many people of 7-8 (end often higher in many cases) have: laziness. Of course, his mother Lucy Elizabeth did not approve of this at all. She was determined that her son was going to get on the path to success. Growing Up is the story of how she and several other influences in young Russell's life helped steer him that way.

The other influences include his younger sister Doris, his Uncle Harold, his Aunt Pat and his 12th grade high school English teacher Mr. Fleagle. All of them give him advice and affection for this is not the time to be loafing around. This is America in the 1930s, the height of the Great Depression.

Baker's writing vividly brings the era to life. He shows how people struggled to make enough money to subsist on and how this affected everyone, especially the people in his family. And it was especially hard on Baker's family, for his father died when he was 5 years old. This resulted in his mother and sister moving from Virginia to Belleville New Jersey (where young Russell experienced his first taste of journalism work as a magazine salesman at eight years old) and finally Baltimore. We are shown Baker going to John's Hopkins University to major in Journalism, accompnay him through service in the Navy and watch as he meets his first wife and gets started on the path towards success in the wordsmithing business.

We get many different tidbits of life in early-to-mid 20th century America. We watch as Russell's Aunt and Uncle quarrel over the hanging of a re-elect Herbert Hoover poster and see them compromise when the aunt goes out to get a Roosevelt poster. We see Uncle Harold introduce Russell to the writing of HL Mencken. We see Russell in a college writing course attempting to write like Hemingway.

Through it all, the one constant throughout the journey is Lucy Elizabeth. She's an ever presence throughout the book, always there to cheer Russell on, to pray for him when he needs it. Unfortunately, we also see old age take over her life and her mind and the final moments of the book as she succumbs to death and can't even remember her own son are positively heartbreaking. Don't miss this very special book! A worthy book worth owning! Another Amazon quick-pick I would like to recommend is THE LOSERS CLUB by Richard Perez -- a wonderful, heartfelt small press novel that you'll certainly enjoy.