author
Ray Stannard Baker
1870–1946
A pioneering American journalist, he helped define the muckraking spirit of the Progressive Era and later became a Pulitzer Prize-winning biographer. Writing both under his own name and as David Grayson, he moved easily between hard reporting and reflective, personal prose.
1 Audiobook
Boys' second book of inventions
by Ray Stannard Baker
About the author
Born in Lansing, Michigan, in 1870, Ray Stannard Baker built his career as a reporter before joining McClure’s Magazine, where he became one of the best-known investigative journalists of his time. His work explored labor conflict, race relations, and political reform, and it helped shape the public-minded reporting associated with the Progressive Era.
He also wrote popular essays and books under the pen name David Grayson, showing a gentler, more reflective side than his magazine investigations. That mix of social concern and approachable writing made him widely read by audiences who knew him both as a serious journalist and as a warm, observant essayist.
Later in life, Baker became closely associated with Woodrow Wilson and wrote the authorized multivolume biography Woodrow Wilson. That project won the Pulitzer Prize for Biography in 1940. He died in Amherst, Massachusetts, in 1946, leaving behind a body of work that linked reform journalism, literary nonfiction, and American political history.