Professor of Journalism

James Tobin specializes in literary journalism and narrative history. He joined the journalism faculty at Miami in 2006. His first book, “Ernie Pyle's War: America's Eyewitness to World War II” (Free Press, 1997), won the 1998 National Book Critics Circle Award for biography. In 2003, Tobin edited and provided commentary for “Reporting America at War: An Oral History” (Hyperion), the companion volume to a PBS documentary on 20th century war correspondents. His other books are "To Conquer the Air: The Wright Brothers and the Great Race for Flight” (Free Press, 2003) and “The Man He Became: How FDR Defied Polio to Win the Presidency” (Simon & Schuster, 2013). Tobin earned a Ph.D. in history at the University of Michigan. He worked for 12 years a reporter for The Detroit News, where his reporting was twice nominated for the Pulitzer Prize. He also received a fellowship from the National Endowment for the Humanities.