From 1961-1965, Baldwin attended the Horace Mann School in Riverdale, N.Y., where he wrote theatre, book and jazz reviews for the student newspaper, The Record; and was co-captain of the varsity cross-country, winter and spring track teams.

He spent junior year abroad at the University of Manchester, England, writing his final term paper - "Order, Rhythm, and Cycle in James Joyce’s Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, Ulysses, and Finnegans Wake" - under the aegis and tutelage of Prof. C.B.Cox, editor of Critical Quarterly.

The New York Public Library, under the visionary leadership of philanthropist Brooke Russell Astor, President Vartan Gregorian, and Chairman of the Board Andrew Heiskell, was on the cusp of an urgently-needed five-year $350 million capital campaign when Baldwin was hired as a proposal writer for the Development Office.

After a few months at an electric typewriter in a cubicle overlooking Bryant Park in the labyrinthine stacks, Baldwin was tapped by VP for Development and Public Affairs Gregory Long to take over the Office of Foundation Giving; and, soon thereafter, was named Manager of The Annual Fund for The Campaign for the Library, with a goal to raise $10 million per year in operating support.

A 1997 documentary, directed by Mel Stuart, with a script by Baldwin based upon his book and narrated by Stockard Channing, Man Ray – Prophet of the Avant-Garde, was shown on WNET-13 American Masters, and nominated for an Emmy Award.

Over the ensuing fourteen years at the helm, Baldwin, with a professional staff of five, governed by a generous and dedicated cadre of publishing executives, authors and philanthropic private citizens, raised more than $25 million and established a permanent endowment to ensure the future stewardship of the institution and its mission.

Coming off a national book tour keenly desiring a collegial environment, Baldwin sent a copy of The American Revelation to Mary A. Papazian, dean of the College of Humanities and Social Sciences at Montclair State University, in his home town, on the chance there might be room for a seasoned scholar to enter the academic ranks.

After teaching modern intellectual and American cultural history for the 2006-7 academic year, Baldwin was recruited by the Dean of the College of the Arts, Geoffrey Newman, who placed him in the Department of Theatre & Dance.

After serving as dramaturg for Tom Stoppard’s Arcadia, and a new version of Homburg adapted and directed by Jorge Cachiero – both shows featuring set design by Baldwin’s colleague, Erhard Rom -- he shifted to training graduate and undergraduate students in the craft of assisting on department production teams; while, on the danceaturgy side, he created and taught critical and observational writing seminars for MFA and BFA dance majors, who hosted innovative "talkbacks" after fall and spring concerts.

As a core faculty member of the BA/MA Theatre Studies Program, Baldwin continued to teach Theatre History, Play Script Interpretation, Dramaturgy, and Arts Administration; while, beyond the College of the Arts, he launched "The Entrepreneurial Imagination" in the School of Business; "Great Books and Ideas" in the Honors Program; and, in 2010, founded the virtual Creative Research Center - a capacious, multipaged web site foregrounding imaginative projects by students and faculty across the entire University, and presenting an annual interdisciplinary Symposium.

Vale invited Baldwin to sit in on the sessions, and he realized that -- after a lifetime devoted to writing books about wide-ranging aspects of American culture, industry, and innovation -- he had fortuitously landed upon the unexplored terrain that would consume his scholarly and creative energies for the coming decade and more, until his retirement from Montclair State University as Professor Emeritus in July, 2020.

One of the most important artistic forces of the twentieth century, Martha Graham (1894-1991) was the legendary American dancer and choreographer who upended dance, propelling the art form into the modern age, and whose profound and pioneering influence is still being felt today.

Baldwin writes of the company’s effulgence during the hothouse artistic explosion of New York City’s midcentury cultural scene; of Erick Hawkins, in 1936, fresh from Balanchine’s School of American Ballet, a handsome Midwesterner fourteen years her junior, becoming Graham’s muse, lover, and eventual spouse.

Enriched by archival visual and audio riches of Martha Graham Resources, the Jerome Robbins Dance Division of the New York Public Library, the Library of Congress – as well as intimate interviews, on tape and in person, with vintage Graham dancers and stars of the present, and hours of eyewitness sojourns in the Company’s vast rehearsal studio in lower Manhattan, Baldwin’s story evolved exponentially, to embrace a large, fiercely lived life, beset by conflict, competition, and loneliness—filled with fire and inspiration, drive, passion, dedication, and sacrifice in work and in dance creation.

[2] Currently, Neil Baldwin is travelling and speaking about Martha Graham; danceaturging for the Sokolow/Theatre Dance Ensemble; arranging his poetic and literary archives for deaccession; keeping several writing projects moving in his journal; and serving as Critic-in-Residence for The Blended Campus.