Farrell is a prize-winning journalist and author. He spent his early career, and won a George Polk award, at The Denver Post. At The Boston Globe, he covered the first Iraq war, several presidential campaigns and served as the Globe’s White House correspondent and Washington editor, among other assignments. Farrell returned to The Denver Post in 2003 for four years as national columnist and Washington bureau chief for the newspaper and the MediaNews chain. During that time he helped lead the paper’s political coverage, and made another reporting trip to war-torn Iraq. In 2007, he left to write Clarence Darrow: Attorney for the Damned, a biography of the great American defense attorney. It will be published by Doubleday in June. In 2001, Farrell authored Tip O’Neill and the Democratic Century, a biography of the late Speaker of the House, which won the Hardeman prize for the best book on Congress. Farrell is a graduate of the University of Virginia.