It Takes a Village Idiot Complicating the Simple Life

There was a time, not so long ago, when something about leaving Manhattan gave magazine writer Jim Mullen the heebie jeebies. Now, in this hilarious, American equivalent of A Year in Provence, he recounts his change from a trend-chasing, club-hopping, acid-tongued night owl to a manure-spreading, cowdodging, aphorism-spouting farmer. After twenty years in New York City, the man who once wrote that "Life is just a cab away" moved to the center of the dairy farm region in upstate New York's Catskill Mountains. Suddenly, he finds himself in a provincial town where the local radio station shuts down at sunset & the newspaper comes out once a week. Day by day he learns the laws of the land: don't wear Ralph Lauren clothes to the barn; don't ask a farmer's wife where the delicious meat she cooked for dinner came from; there's nothing like the smell of fresh manure in the morning. As the local "flatlander" clinging to citified ways, he soon finds he's a source of endless amusement & fascination to his tractor-pulling neighbors--& they to him. Marked by Mullen's notorious sharp wit & humor. It Takes a Village Idiot is a laugh-out-loud account of one man's trials & tribulations in his new, not-so-simple country life--the perfect read for anyone who's ever thought about leaving the rat race behind.Mullen, Jim is the author of 'It Takes a Village Idiot Complicating the Simple Life' with ISBN 9780743211314 and ISBN 0743211316.