Elected to the Texas Institute of Letters in 1993--two of his fellow inductees were James Michener and Bill Moyers--Mike Cox is the best-selling author of more than 40 nonfiction books and hundreds of magazine articles, newspaper columns and essays.

In recognition of his body of work, Cox received the A.C. Greene Lifetime Achievement Award in 2011. Two of his books -- a work on Texas disasters and a two-volume history of the Texas Rangers -- are included in the 101 Essential Texas Books by Glenn Dromgoole and Carlton Stowers. In 2022, he was listed in Marquis Who's Who in America.

Cox’ most-acclaimed works are his two-volume Texas Ranger history, Wearing the Cinco Peso, and Time of the Rangers (Tor/Forge, 2008, 2009), and a true crime book on professed serial killer Henry Lee Lucas, The Confessions of Henry Lee Lucas (Simon & Schuster, 1991, with a revised edition released in 2021). His book with Dean Smith, Cowboy Stuntman: From Olympic Gold to the Silver Screen (Texas Tech University Press, 2013), won three national awards, including the Will Rogers Medallion in 2014.

A former award-winning newspaper reporter, Cox served as chief of media relations for the Texas Department of Public Safety and later communications manager for the Texas Department of Transportation before retiring in 2007.

Retiring from retirement in 2010, he went back to work for the state as a spokesperson for Texas Parks and Wildlife. He left the 8-to-5 world for good in February 2015 to write full time.

A native of Amarillo, Cox’s parents met as reporters for competing newspapers while covering a sensational murder trial in West Texas. Cox grew up in Austin, where he began his newspaper career as a high school news columnist and copy boy for the Austin American-Statesman. While attending Angelo State University, he worked full-time for the San Angelo Standard-Times. At the beginning of his junior year, he transferred to Texas Tech University where he attended class during the day and worked nights at the Lubbock Avalanche-Journal. He returned to Austin in 1970 after being re-hired by the Austin daily. He began his second career as a government spokesman in 1985.

When not writing or traveling, Cox spends as much time as he can fishing, hunting, prowling antique malls and bookstores and looking for new stories to tell. Now living in the Texas hill country town of Wimberley, Cox's goal is to keep writing at least one book a year until he runs out of ideas or time.