Confessions from Left Field

by Raymond Mungo

169 pages, Hardcover

First published March 23, 1983

About the author

Raymond Mungo (born 1946) is the author, co-author, or editor of more than a dozen books. He writes about business, economics, and financial matters as well as cultural issues. In the 1960s, he attended Boston University, where he served as editor-in-chief of the Boston University News in 1966-67; and where, as a student leader, he spearheaded demonstrations against the Vietnam War.
In 1967, Mungo co-founded the Liberation News Service (LNS), an alternative news agency, along with Marshall Bloom. LNS split off from College Press Service (CPS) in a political dispute. The founding event was a notably tumultuous meeting that transpired not far from the offices of CPS on Church Street in Washington, D.C.. Mungo descriptively details this event in his book, Famous Long Ago: My Life and Hard Times with the Liberation News Service.
In 1968 he moved to Vermont with Verandah Porche and others as part of the back to the land movement.
Mungo continued to write through the 1970s and 1980s; however in 1997 his career path took a different turn. He completed a Master's Degree in counseling and began working with the severely mentally ill and with AIDS patients in Los Angeles. Mungo visited France in 2000 and briefly considered relocating there.

Reviews

[Brad Justice · Rating 4 out of 5]

I do not know if this is really worthy of a 4 star rating, but I am giving it one regardless for nostalgia. I lost the original copy of this I had when I was a kid, and picked up a replacement through Amazon. For whatever reason, I liked it a lot then, when I was younger, and it is always been a book I loved. I don't know that it held up, but it is still an entertaining quick read. It was my first exposure to the Spaceman Bill Lee along with (unnamed) Dock Ellis. The baseball seasons covered are really of my youth and not that I fully remember them. I did have a lot of baseball cards from then and it reminds me of those bubblegum card days. http://www.vintagecardprices.com/pics...

[Joel · Rating 2 out of 5]

I wouldn't have read this if I weren't in China - we take what we can get here. I paid about 75 cents for it. Not bad, and interesting to read something about life in the US in 1981-1982, but I kept wishing there would be more about baseball and less about drugs. And there wasn't even that much about drugs. A lot of great stuff about the Seattle Mariners when they were in their early sucky years, as opposed to their later sucky years.

The author's full name is "Raymond Mungo" but apparently this book was never all that well known -- at least not enough for goodreads to have any info about it.