THERE’S A COUNTRY IN MY CELLAR ...

THERE’S A COUNTRY IN MY CELLAR by Russell Baker (Avon: $8.95). The publication of this anthology marks the 25th anniversary of Baker’s Pulitzer Prize-winning column in the New York Times. As Baker enjoys a reputation as one of the nation’s foremost commentators, it’s hardly a surprise that his writing is often hilarious. However, a darker note has crept into his recent work, which he describes as written in an era when America was “haunted by a sense of breakdown. This sense of breakdown was in some ways more demoralizing than the failure of all that firepower in Vietnam had been. It gnawed your confidence away day by day, relentlessly, bit by bit. The breakdown was happening in small, everyday things we once took for granted. It made you feel that foundations were rotting away down in the dark.” A very funny book, but one that provokes unsettling reflections.