Kevin Baker is an American novelist and journalist. He was born in Englewood, New Jersey, and grew up in New Jersey and Rockport, Massachusetts. As a youth he worked on the Gloucester Daily Times, covering school-boy sports, as well as local town meetings and other civic affairs. He graduated from Columbia University, where he majored in political science, in 1980. Baker is the author of the City of Fire trilogy, published by HarperCollins, which consists of the following historical novels: Dreamland; the bestselling Paradise Alley; and Strivers Row. The middle volume of the trilogy won the 2003 James Fenimore Cooper Prize for Best Historical Fiction and the American Book Award. Baker has also written a contemporary baseball novel called Sometimes You See it Coming, and a graphic novel called Luna Park. He was chief historical researcher on Harold Evans?s illustrated history of the United States, The American Century. 

January 1st, 1958 in (Age 66)