Michael Stoianov Gloukhov was born in June 1944 during the heaviest bombing of Sofia by the US Air Corps. His parents were forced to divorce because his father was an officer in the pre-communist Royal Army. Michael graduated in 1963 and was conscripted in the Bulgarian Army for two years. To avoid membership in the Communist party, he declined to go to Reserve Officer's School and went instead as a Private in the mechanized Infantry. Eventually, he escaped to Belgium, followed by his mother and little sister. He earned a degree in Political Science while he drove a taxicab and in the 1980s became an international radio broadcaster with the Bulgarian Service of the Voice of America. Gloukhov joined the US Navy Reserve in 1987 at the age of 43, serving all over the world due to his unique, multifaceted background. He is currently married to the former Miss Dobrinka Droumeva and has a son, Ryan, who is now aged 30.
Sofia-Brussels-Washington: From Serfdom to Freedom to Self-Accomplishment: Finding the American Dream is a memoir of Michael Gloukhov's remarkable life from his war-torn youth to his thriving adulthood.