Books By David Ewing Duncan
Microlands
The Future of Life on Earth (and why it’s smaller than you think)
by J. Craig Venter and David Ewing Duncan
You’ve heard of the human microbiome. Did you know the Earth has one, too? In total, our oceans, soil, sky, plants, and animals are home to 5x10(30) (five million trillion trillion) microbes that are the true masters of our planet. This book is an epic science and adventure story of famed geneticist Craig Venter’s voyages from 2003-2018 in his 100-foot sailing and research vessel, Sorcerer II, that collected microbes all over the world—and revolutionized how we view this tiny, invisible world. Microlands also details how humans and climate change are altering the Earth’s microbiome in ways that are not healthy for us or for the ecosystem we live in. (Harvard U Press/ LittleBrownUK, 2024)
US edition title: The Voyage of Sorcerer II: Order Here
“...brimming with the excitement of discovery…will undoubtedly shape our understanding of the global ecosystem for decades to come.”
– Siddhartha Mukherjee,
Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Emperor of All MaladiesRead my essay in Vanity Fair : “The Next Climate Change Calamity?: We’re Ruining the Microbiome, According to Human-Genome-Pioneer Craig Venter”
And my commentary in Scientific American: “Carbon in the Oceans Is Altering the Micro-Fabric of Life”
Talking to Robots
Tales from Our Human Robot Futures
24 robots and AI systems that are being built or dreamed about in the present – including Teddy Bot, Doc Bot, Warrior Bot, Facebook Bot, Politician Bot, Sex Bot, Matrix Bot, Immortal Me Bot, and God Bot. What’s different is that each bot is described by a narrator who is living in the future. He or she (or it?) knows how things turn out for each bot, with some of these future scenarios turning out great, others not so much. (Dutton, 2019)
Featured: Today Show, Time, NPR, USA Today, Bloomberg, and more
Video of David on PBS Newshour
Excerpted in Inc. Magazine
“...intensely readable, downright terrifying, and surprisingly uplifting new book…”
- Vanity Fair“...it’s the future that award-winning journalist David Ewing Duncan explores in this riveting read…”
- Time Magazine
Masterminds
Genius, DNA, and the Quest to Rewrite Life
A Best Book of the Year – San Francisco Chronicle
A depiction of cutting-edge science and its profound implications told through the personalities of scientists who are rewriting life on earth.
Throughout history, the outsized personalities of scientists have astonished us with their brilliance and audacity. From Galileo to Jonas Salk, they push society into new realms with great leaps of inventiveness and originality, providing us with everything from the wheel to rocket ships and penicillin. Today's masterminds in biotechnology promise lifespans up to 400 years; cures for cancer; and an end to pollution. But these masterminds could also produce unintended nightmares – bioengineered lifeforms that run amuck, bioweapons, social upheavals. Which will it be: heaven or hell, or both, or neither? (HarperCollins, 2005)
David on NPR's Morning Edition with Renée Montaigne
“Rather than speculating about the future in a more conventional way, David Ewing Duncan, in his charming and often amusing book uses instead the personalities and thoughts of a coterie of exceptional geneticists.”
— Sunday Telegraph, Adrian Woolfson“200 year old people? Emails sent by brain waves? [Duncan] sketches the possible future.”
— USA Weekend“...vivid, memorable portrayals of the scientists working on biology's most fascinating frontiers.”
– James Fallows, AtlanticUK Edition
HarperCollins
Experimental Man
What one man’s body reveals about his future, your health, and our toxic world
David Ewing Duncan takes the ultimate high-tech medical exam, investigating the future impact of what's hidden deep inside all of us. Duncan takes "guinea pig" journalism to the cutting edge of science, building on award-winning articles he wrote for Wired and National Geographic, in which he was tested for hundreds of genes and chemicals associated with disease, emotions, and other traits. Expanding on these tests, he examines his genes, environment, brain, and body, collected terabytes of personal health data on himself and exploring what they reveal about his and his family's future health, traits, and ancestry, as well as the profound impact of this new self-knowledge on society, families, individuals, and what it means to be human. (Wiley, 2009)
"Twenty years from now David Duncan's pioneering grand experiment will become commonplace…It's not often you get to read a book mailed back from the future, but the one you hold is just that: news from the year 2029."
— Kevin Kelly, Wired“...brilliant view of what cutting-edge medical technology can - and cannot - tell us about our future health."
— Clive Cookson, Financial Times"David Ewing Duncan has come up with simple but elegant conceit that yields a rich trove of information and insight about how we live now."
– Michael Pollan“… Duncan shows what good reporting and storytelling can do. His narrative method… educates and entertains.”
– San Francisco ChronicleRelated Articles by David
"DNA as Destiny", Wired
"The Pollution Within", National Geographic
“Experimental Man”, Discover Magazine, Part 1: Genetics and the Environment; Part 2: Inside the Human Brain
Selected Talks and Media
“Experimental Man: Predicting My Future and Yours”, TEDx Berkeley
“Experimental Man: The Truth Behind Genetic Testing”, CUNY and the NY Academy of Sciences, New York
Experimental Man Segment and Interview, Today Show
“My Life as a Human Guinea Pig,” NPR's All Things Considered
Chinese Translation
Xian Jiaotong University Press
When I’m 164
The New Science of Radical Life Extension and What Happens if It Succeeds
Based on a TEDx talk in Brussels, this short ebook takes us through recent breakthroughs in bioscience that might one day allow humans to extend their lifespans through genetics, regenerating tissue, and bionics, to name a few. The book them addresses the philosophical issue of what happens then? What if we succeed – what would this mean for you and for humans? And for the planet?
“David Duncan makes it clear that immortality may not be all it is hyped up to be. Don't read this unless you want your mind changed.”
– Kevin Kelly, Wired “If I live another 200 years, I don't think I'll read a better or more enjoyable book on the longevity movement. David Ewing Duncan explains the massive impacts age-delay will have — whether sociological, philosophical, financial, medical, you name it — and he does so with his usual clear-eyed balance of open-mindedness and skepticism.”
– A.J. Jacobs, Author, Drop Dead HealthySelected Talks and Media
“When I'm 164,” TED x Brussels:
“When I’m 164,” TEDx SF
Interview with John Hockenberry, “The Takeaway”, NPR
Related Articles by David
“How Long do You Want to Live?”, New York Times
Series on Longevity, Atlantic Magazine
“How Science Can Build a Better You”, New York Times
Calendar
Humanity’s Epic Quest to Determine a True and Accurate Year
International Bestseller in 14 countries, published in 22 Languages
The adventure spans the world from Stonehenge to astronomically aligned pyramids at Giza, from Mayan observatories at Chichen Itza to the atomic clock in Washington, the world's official timekeeper since the 1960s. We visit cultures from Vedic India and Cleopatra's Egypt to Byzantium and the Elizabethan court; and meet an impressive cast of historic personages from Julius Caesar to Omar Khayyam, and giants of science from Galileo and Copernicus to Stephen Hawking. Our present calendar system predates the invention of the telescope, the mechanical clock, and the concept ol zero and its development is one of the great untold stories of science and history.
How did Pope Gregory set right a calendar which was in error by at least ten lull days? What did time mean to a farmer on the Rhine in 800 A.D.? What was daily life like in the Middle Ages, when the general population reckoned births and marriages by seasons, wars, kings'' reigns, and saints' days? In short, how did the world
CALENDAR was a selection of the Book of the Month Club and the History Book of the Month Club. First serial: Smithsonian (US), The Saturday Telegraph (UK).
Featured in the UK as a 5-part radio series on BBC Radio, narrated by Derek Jacobi
"An astonishing book."
– Le Figaro (Paris)"In this finely researched book, David Ewing Duncan chronicles how mankind has gradually moved towards a common calendar... Mr. Duncan brilliantly evokes the more philosophical tensions within Christianity about the nature of time."
– The Economist Calendar sparkles… Gripping, expansive and scholarly, it will be indispensable reading for years to come. Duncan has achieved a rare feat in turning something ordinary into an extraordinary metaphor of life.”
– Amanda Foreman, The Observer (U.K.)
David Ewing Duncan’s The Calendar is a charming and well-written ramble through history... We encounter heroes and villains, popes and emperors… He breathes life into numerous nearly forgotten historical figures… a good read…"
– Kristen Lippincott, The Times of London
