In 1898, he joined the staff of McClure’s, a pioneer muckraking magazine, and quickly rose to prominence along with Lincoln Steffens and Ida Tarbell. He also dabbled in fiction, writing children’s stories for the magazine Youth’s Companion and a nine-volume series of stories about rural living in America, the first of which was titled Adventures in Contentment under the pseudonym David Grayson.

In 1906, Baker, Steffens and Tarbell left McClure’s and created American Magazine. In 1908, he wrote the book Following the Color Line, becoming the first prominent journalist to examine America’s racial divide. In 1912, he supported the presidential candidacy of Woodrow Wilson, which led to a close relationship between the two men.

Baker eventually published 15 volumes about Wilson and internationalism, including an 8-volume biography, the last two volumes of which won the Pulitzer Prize for biography in 1940.

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