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historymike's profile Michael Brooks / Male / Member since July 2007 / Last seen 1 year ago

I lived in Detroit for almost twenty-five years before moving to Toledo to pursue business interests. After a decade plugging away as a retail business owner, I decided to return to school and also to pursue more fulfilling goals as a writer.

My current academic research interests are in the roles of epidemic disease in history as well as the history of the colonial Atlantic. I received my Bachelor of Arts in History from the University of Toledo, graduating with departmental and University honors. I was awarded first place in both the Shapiro Essay Contest and the Deanâs Essay Prize at UT in 2004. I completed my Master's thesis at UT, and am enrolled in the doctoral program at the university, concentrating on European expansion, epidemiological history, and modern European history.

In 2007 I received a University of Toledo Graduate Fellowship, which is awarded to two UT graduate students per year. I plan to take advantage of this honor by traveling abroad to archives in Europe and Latin America.

I am a bit of a linguistic geek, and enjoy challenging myself with foreign languages. My Spanish and Portuguese are strong, and I have respectable reading skills with French, Italian, and Latin. I have also played with Russian quite a bit, although I am far from proficient in it. I can't read any Arabic to save my life, but I learned quite a few cool Arabic cuss words growing up near Dearborn, like Ø§ÙØ¹Ø§ÙØ±Ø© and Ø§ÙØªØºÙÙØ· .

As an active freelance journalist, my work has been published in a wide variety of local and national periodicals. I won back-to-back Touchstone Awards in 2004 and 2005 for my work as a reporter for Toledo newspapers, and merited an honorable mention of the coveted local news award in 2006 for my coverage of the 2005 North Toledo riot.

I have had several peer-reviewed articles published in academic journals, and have a chapter in an upcoming anthology on indigenous peoples of North America. Material from this website, Historymike, has been featured on USAToday, Salon.com, MSNBC , and CBSNews.com. Also feel free to visit my photography blog, Toledo Perspectives.

I also work as a writing tutor, a freelance editor, and web design consultant. Send me an email if you have any use for one of the above hats I wear; I am always looking to scrape up some extra cash to keep my kids well-shod and my creditors at bay.

On the personal side, my wife and I have been foster and adoptive parents for many years, and we have lately begun to foster dogs (hey - we can only help out so many children, and dogs are always happy to see you). I read incessantly, write in a wide variety of genres, and eat like it's my full-time job.

We curently have nine seven six five six five children at home, all of whom fall under the category of "teenager." Oh, what blessed joys are the teenaged years...

When not scratching out a living as a writer and academic, I enjoy photography, playing guitar, spending time with my family, and plotting world domination.