Michael Wallis (born October 7, 1945)[1] is an American journalist, popular historian, author and speaker. He has written seventeen books,[2] including Route 66: The Mother Road, about the historic highway U.S. Route 66. His work has also been published extensively in magazines and newspapers, including Time, Life, People, Smithsonian, The New Yorker, and The New York Times. Wallis is also the voice of Sheriff in the Disney/Pixar franchise Cars.
Wallis has received the John Steinbeck Award, the Arrell Gibson Lifetime Achievement Award from the Oklahoma Center for the Book, the Will Rogers Spirit Award, and the Western Heritage Award from the National Cowboy Hall & Western Heritage Museum.[2] He has been inducted into the Oklahoma Writers Hall of Fame,[3] Writers Hall of Fame of America, and the Oklahoma Historians Hall of Fame, and was the first inductee into the Oklahoma Route 66 Hall of Fame.
Wallis was interviewed by Rep. Roy Blunt (R-Missouri) for After WordsonBook TV, 29 April 2007, discussing his latest book, Billy the Kid: The Endless Ride.
Wallis was born in St. Louis, Missouri. He graduated from Western Military Academy in Alton, Illinois, in 1963. He later attended the University of MissouriinColumbia, and moved to Miami, Florida, in 1978, where he worked for Time's Caribbean Bureau. He currently lives in Tulsa, Oklahoma, with his wife, Suzanne Fitzgerald Wallis.[5]
