James Tobin (author)
James E. Tobin is an American author of books of popular history and biography, including Ernie Pyle's War: America's Eyewitness to World War II, which won the National Book Critics Circle Award in the biography/autobiography category. Since 2006 he has been a professor of journalism at Miami University in Oxford, Ohio.
His other books include To Conquer the Air: The Wright Brothers and the Great Race for Flight ; Great Projects ; and The Man He Became: How FDR Defied Polio to Win the Presidency. In 2021, his retelling of the story of Roosevelt and polio for young-adult readers was published as Master of His Fate: Roosevelt's Rise from Polio to the Presidency ''.
With the syndicated cartoonist Dave Coverly, Tobin has written two picture books for children, Sue MacDonald Had a Book and The Very Inappropriate Word.
He has written often about the history of the University of Michigan, his alma mater. A collection of his articles, Sing to the Colors: A Writer Explores Two Centuries at the University of Michigan, was published by the University of Michigan Press. He planned and edited an illustrated volume, "Our Michigan", also published by U-M Press.
Tobin earned a B.A. and a PhD in history at the University of Michigan. From 1986 to 1998 he was a reporter at the Detroit News.''