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David Owen

David Owen is an author and a journalist with an impressive and wide variety of interests; among them golf, the theater, the debris of human consumption, and the world’s natural resources and urbanization.

He has been a staff writer at The New Yorker since 1991. Some of his books have taken root in articles first published in the magazine. Before his tenure at The New Yorker, David was a contributing editor at The Atlantic, Golf Digest and Popular Mechanics, and a senior writer at Harper’s.

He is the author of more than a dozen books, including “None of the Above: The Truth Behind the SATs,” an exposé of the testing industry - now, in the era of high- priced cheating scams, more significant than ever; “The Conundrum: How Scientific Innovation, Increased Efficiency, and Good Intentions Can Make Our Energy and Climate Problems Worse;” “Where the Water Goes: Life and Death Along the Colorado River,” “The Chosen One: Tiger Woods and the Dilemma of Greatness,” the soon to be issued, “Volume Control: Hearing in a Deafening World;” and “Green Metropolis,” where Owen argues for a green economy based on the ecologic efficiency of dense cities, small dwellings and the consequential reduced consumption of most urban dwellers. It is a fact-driven manifesto of sorts, that challenges assumptions about the large waste and carbon footprint of urban settlement. Ten years after its publication, it is still relevant.

In 2011, he was named, in a book edited by Andy Borowitz, one of the fifty funniest American writers.