Undeluded by the roar of what he calls "our national engines of ballyhoo, bushwah, and baloney," Russell Baker reflects on the impact that a gallery of larger-than-life characters--from William Randolph Hearst and Barry Gold...

Russell Baker is the 1979 Pulitzer Prize winner for Distinguished Commentary and a columnist for The New York Times. This book traces his youth in the mountains of rural Virginia. When Baker was only five, his father died. His mother...