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It Takes a Village Idiot

A Memoir of Life After the City

About The Book

Finalist for the 2001 Thurber Prize for American Humor a Rocky Mountain News (Denver) Best Book of the Year
Millions of people dream of abandoning the city routine for a simple country life. Jim Mullen was not one of them. He loved his Manhattan existence: parties, openings, movie screenings. He could walk to hundreds of restaurants, waste entire afternoons at the Film Forum, people-watch from his window. Then, one day, calamity.
His wife quits smoking and buys a weekend house in the Catskill Mountains of upstate New York -- in a tiny town diametrically opposed to Manhattan in every way. Slowly, however, the man who once boasted, "Life is just a cab away," begins to warm to the place -- manure and compost and strangers who wave and all -- and to embrace the kind of life that once gave him the shakes.

About The Author

Product Details

  • Publisher: Simon & Schuster (July 16, 2002)
  • Length: 224 pages
  • ISBN13: 9780743218795

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Raves and Reviews

The Dallas Morning News Whether you spend your summer sipping lemonade on a porch swing or gripping a cuppa Joe on the subway, take this book along....Lighthearted and poignant.

Scott C. Yates Rocky Mountain News (Denver) A terrific blend of self-deprecating humor and trenchant observations about the funny side of life on both sides of the great urban-rural divide. Fans of Steve Martin or Dave Barry will love it.

Jonathan Yardley The Washington Post Book World Mullen is even funnier here [than in his Entertainment Weekly column].

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