Michael K. Bohn

Michael Bohn has been writing for publication since 1996, but led a varied life before that. A career naval intelligence officer from 1969 to 1988, Bohn served aboard ships and intelligence centers, including a tour in South Vietnam. He was a military social aide to President Nixon and ran the White House Situation Room for President Reagan. He sent a twice-daily summary of world events to Reagan and senior White House staff members and provided crisis management support during dozens of international dust-ups during Reagan's second term. He was swept up in the Iran-Contra scandal while working for Reagan and became a victim of political posturing of the highest order. Mr. Bohn managed defense contracts for Booz*Allen, 1988-92, and owned a residential remodeling company 1992-2001. Michael was a primary contributor and on-screen personality for a 1999 Discovery Channel documentary on submarine warfare during the Cold War. He acted as a program consultant for, and appeared in, two BBC Television documentaries about crisis management in the White House, one in November 2002 and the other in April 2003. Also, Mr. Bohn appeared in a July 2003 special, "The White House at War," a joint ABC News, New York Times, and Discovery Channel project; and in a 2004 German public TV special, "Palaces of Power." In seeking to establish a writing career, Bohn turned to his friend Gene Gibbons, then the Reuters White House correspondent. "Write for the local paper," Gibbons said, "they'll print anything." In 1996, he sold his first article to the Mount Vernon Gazette, which circulates in the Virginia suburbs outside Washington DC. Since then he has written features and reported on golf for the Gazette and 18 other papers in the Connection Newspaper group in Virginia. His first book was Nerve Center, Inside the White House Situation Room (2003). The second soon followed--The Achille Lauro Hijacking (2004), and his third, Money Golf (2007), a history of the gentlemanly wager on the golf course, was named by Golf Digest as one of the most intriguing golf books of 2007. Bohn's latest book, Heroes & Ballyhoo: How the Golden Age of the 1920s Transformed American Sports, will be published in late October by Potomac Books.