Author Bio
• Birth—May 22, 1972
• Where—Los Angeles, California
• Education—B.A., Pitzer College;
• Currently—lives in Venice, California
Maximillian Michael Brooks is an American actor and author, best known for his novel World War Z (2006) and its related "survival guides." More recently he published the thriller/suspense novel, Devolution: A Firsthand Account of the Rainier Sasquatch Massacre (2020). Brooks is also a lecturer at the Modern War Institute at West Point, New York.
Early life
Brooks, the son of actress Anne Bancroft and director, producer, writer, and actor Mel Brooks, is dyslexic. In a 2017 interview with NPR's Terry Gross, Brooks recalled what it was like growing up in the 1970s before dyslexia was understood:
[T]hey didn't even call it a disability back then; it was just "laziness," "goofing off…." And my mother, one of the greatest, most successful actresses of her day, gave up her career… to be my educational advocate and to teach herself about dyslexia.… She… had [my school books] all read onto audio cassette, so I could listen to my reading list. And if I hadn't been able to do that, I wouldn't have graduated from high school.… [N]ot only did my mother give me my life, she saved my life.
Brooks earned a BA in history from Pitzer College in Claremont, California, and he also pursued graduate work in film at American University in Washington, D.C.
Career
From 2001 to 2003, Brooks was a member of the writing team at Saturday Night Live.
In 2003, Brooks published his first book, The Zombie Survival Guide: Complete Protection from the Living Dead, which describes the origin and lives of zombies. In 2006, he released World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War. The novel was later adapted to film, starring Brad Pitt. Brooks's third book, in 2009, was a graphic novel, The Zombie Survival Guide: Recorded Attacks, which depicted several events detailed in the first book's latter section.
Devolution came out in 2020, a thriller written through diary entries, news transcripts, and Brooks's own research. The novel is a fictional account of the legendary Bigfoot in the U.S. Pacific Northwest.
In addition to his writing, Brooks has also acted in and done voice-overs for more than a dozen films and TV series. (From Wikipedia. Retrieved 6/10/2020.)