10 Facts About Michael Totten

Michael Totten's work appears in various publications, websites, and on his blog.

Michael Totten's mother is Gena Layman Pegg and his father John Totten is a Republican and a military veteran.

Michael Totten studied English literature at the University of Oregon in the early 1990s, after attending South Salem High School in the 1980s.

Michael Totten has said that he did not like his time living in Salem and that he was glad to leave.

Since, Michael 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, Michael Totten traveled to Baghdad to embed with several US Army units before transitioning to Anbar province and embedding with US Marines.

Michael 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.

Michael Totten was in Georgia during the 2008 South Ossetia war.

Michael Totten believed that the critics of the war in Iraq who noted the lack of progress from 2004 to 2006 were correct while the Bush administration was wrong.

Michael Totten was briefly a Libertarian during the 1990s but became a Democrat afterwards, though he has previously said that he was never fully content with being a Democrat and has considered returning to the Libertarians.