Michael James Totten (born September 16, 1970) is an American journalist and author who has reported from the Middle East, Africa, the Balkans, Cuba, Vietnam, and the Caucasus. His work appears in various publications, websites, and on his blog. His first book, The Road to Fatima Gate, was published in 2011 and was awarded the Washington Institute Silver Book Prize. In his blog posts, he also describes himself as an "independent journalist", while regularly exposing his thoughts in articles which often focus on Middle Eastern conflicts. Early life and education Totten is of English descent and was born in Salem, Oregon on September 16, 1970. His mother is Gena Layman Pegg and his father John Totten is a Republican and a military veteran. Totten's grandfather was a World War II veteran. Totten attended McKinley Elementary School in Salem, Oregon. Totten studied English literature at the University of Oregon in the early 1990s, after attending South Salem High School in the 1980s. He has said that he did not like his time living in Salem and that he was glad to leave. Career In the 1990s, Totten wrote an opinion column for The Daily Iowan. Since, Totten's work has appeared in The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, City Journal, the New York Daily News, The Jerusalem Post, the Daily Star of Lebanon, Reason magazine, Commentary, LA Weekly, Front Page, Tech Central Station, and the Australian edition of Newsweek. In July 2007, Totten traveled to Baghdad to embed with several U.S. Army units before transitioning to Anbar province and embedding with U.S. Marines. In late 2007 he embedded with U.S. Marines in Fallujah, and he embedded again with the U.S. Army in Baghdad in late 2008. Totten won the 2007 Weblog Award for Best Middle East or Africa Blog, he won it again in 2008, and was named Blogger of the Year in 2006 by The Week magazine for his dispatches from the Middle East. He was in Georgia during the 2008 South Ossetia war. His most recent book is Tower of the Sun: Stories from the Middle East and North Africa. Ideology In the past Totten has described himself as a "weird combination of liberal, libertarian, and neocon" and later he described himself as politically centrist. He believed that the critics of the war in Iraq who noted the lack of progress from 2004 to 2006 were correct while