Raymond Mungo was born in a howling blizzard in February, 1946, in one of those awful mill towns in eastern Massachusetts and lived to tell about it. After a tumultuous year as editor-in-chief of the Boston University News in 1966-67, a year filled with antiwar protests and emergent counter-culture uprisings, Ray founded the Liberation News Service in Washington, DC with friends Marshall Bloom and Verandah Porche.

Their zany adventures as young underground journalists were recalled in Ray's first book, "Famous Long Ago: My Life and Hard Times with Liberation News Service," which remained in print from 1970 to 2000 and is soon to be in development as a motion picture.

"Famous Long Ago" launched Ray's literary star and a succession of other books, mostly devoted to the aspirations and concerns of his stoned generation. "Total Loss Farm" described a year in the life of his Vermont farm commune, was a cover story for the Atlantic Monthly and was nominated for the Pulitzer Prize. "Return to Sender" depicted his odyssey to Japan, India, and the Far East in the early 1970's, looking for his guru.......with humor and without much success.

These three titles were conjoined as an Avon Books paperback under the title "Mungobus" and later also appeared together in the Citadel Press Counterculture Classics series under the simple title "Famous Long Ago." Some 15 other books Ray has written had varying degrees of popularity, including a few complete stinkos, but he managed nonetheless a 30 year career in which he never held a "real" job.

Titles that are still in print include "Palm Springs Babylon," a wry look at the corrupt lives of movie stars in that desert resort town, and "No Credit Required," a practical little manual for buyers of real estate who lack good credit. The old, out of print books are available from used book merchants like Bibliofind.com, Alibris.com, and Powells.com.

Ray also has contributed hundreds of articles to newspapers and magazines, written software and screenplays, owned a small press and bookstore in Seattle, and generally did everything possible to avoid working. In 1997, however, he completed a master's degree in counseling and became a social worker in the LA area, tending principally to AIDS patients and the severely mentally ill.