Dr. Michael Brooks is a Midwestern
historian,
journalist, and admitted
fantasy football addict. On
Wikipedia I spend an inordinate amount of time working on
cleanup activities lately, and I have been known to hang out at the
Wiki history portal from time to time.
As a journalist I have written for a number of periodicals, including the Toledo Free Press, and my work has been published in a variety of local, regional, and national periodicals. I achieved a level of notoriety for my blog coverage of the North Toledo riot on 15 October 2005; having correctly predicted the violence that ensued, my real-time blog coverage provided images and news reports faster and more accurately than the mainstream media. I happened to find a WiFi signal in the riot zone, and so I blogged while watching the chaos.
I won Touchstone Awards in 2004 and 2005 for best news articles in a non-daily periodical, awarded by the Toledo Press Club. My work on conditions at the Toledo Jeep plant has been translated into German, Spanish, and Portuguese versions.
As an academic I have research interests in epidemiological history, European expansion, and the history of American hate groups. I have taught at the University of Toledo, Monroe County Community College, Owens Community College, Wayne State University, and Lourdes University. I currently work at Bowling Green State University, focusing on the development of online history courses. In 2014 I published a book on the history of the Ku Klux Klan in Wood County, Ohio, and in 2021 I published my second book, which examines the history of white supremacy in Ohio. I have several other manuscripts approaching book length, and I have also published numerous articles in academic journals.
On Wikipedia I spend far too much time on article improvement, finding myself compelled to fix weaker articles I stumble upon and for which I possess some level of expertise. I am not proud of this, but rather look upon this as a pathological obsession. When not writing or teaching, I spend most of my time with my family, my dogs, and my garden.
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