Of Mule and Man

✍ Scribed by Farrell, Mike

• Publisher: Akashic Books
• Year: 2009
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 209 KB
• Category: Fiction
• City: New York, United States,United States.
• ISBN-13: 9789199335612

✦ Synopsis

The M A S H actor, activist, and author of Just Call Me Mike embarks on a cross-country book tour visiting human rights and social justice organizations.*

In May 2008—shortly after being named by the Los Angeles Times as a “Person of the Year”—Mike Farrell drove himself across the country on a book tour like no other. Networking with political groups (and friends like Joseph C. Wilson and Valerie Plame), Farrell redefined the very concepts of book touring and “promotion” through a progressive lens.

“Not since Steinbeck’s Travels with Charley: in Search of America has there been a more beautifully written and compelling journey into the heartland of America. Mike Farrell celebrates his beloved country with great honesty and sincerity, with humility and grace. A beautiful and courageous book, an American classic.” —Ron Kovic, author of Born on the Fourth of July

“Farrell writes with an upbeat, optimistic attitude, infused with humor, insights and soul. As he drives across the landscape, he also drives home important social justice issues.” — Publishers Weekly **

From Publishers Weekly

Actor-producer Farrell's 2007 memoir, Just Call Me Mike: A Journey to Actor and Activist , traced his spiritual odyssey from a working-class childhood to fame from TV's M A S H and his worldwide humanitarian efforts. Promotion of that paperback led him on an 8,882-mile book tour to 25 cities, documented in dispatches to the Huffington Post _. Now he collects his journal entries from that 36-day road trip with Mule, his nickname for the Prius hybrid rental car he drove from city to city in May and June 2008. For Farrell, the trip was an opportunity to network with the human rights and justice organizations co-sponsoring the tour, while meeting old friends, giving interviews and doing q &a sessions where he could speak out: One woman asked me what I thought were the three most critically important things we had to do to get this country back on track. I said, 'Elect Barack Obama, elect Barack Obama, elect Barack Obama.' The book is nicely designed, with page numbers inside little road sign shapes; chapter headings list mileage, destination and such co-sponsors as the ACLU, Center for Victims of Torture and Greenpeace. Sidebars throughout detail the aims and accomplishments of groups like the Southern Center for Human Rights, which represents hundreds on death row. Farrell writes with an upbeat, optimistic attitude, infused with humor, insights and soul. As he drives across the landscape, he also drives home important social justice issues. _(May 1)*
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From School Library Journal

Farrell is best known for his role as B.J. Hunnicutt on M A S H , but off the screen, he has been a political activist, working with several human rights and peace organizations. In May 2008, he set out on a book tour for his autobiography, Just Call Me Mike , which he chronicled in dispatches to the Huffington Post*. Those dispatches are gathered together here, along with additional information and resources. Farrell's politics are loud and clear in these vignettes as he frequently refers to the events happening in the late spring and summer of 2008, acquiring ammunition by listening to right-wing talk radio along the long stretches of highway between bookstores and public library readings. The descriptions of the landscapes and cities are evocative, but the flow of the story is frequently disrupted with his tendency to name-drop. The book will likely be appreciated by fans and like-minded activists, but others may be turned off by Farrell's polemics.—Anna Creech, Univ. of Richmond, VA
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

✦ Subjects

United States