Experimental Man
What One Man's Body Reveals about His Future, Your Health, and Our Toxic World
(hardcover: Wiley, 2009)

Bestselling author 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 chemicals and genes associated with disease, emotions, and other traits. Expanding on these tests, he examines his genes, environment, brain, and body, 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 what it means to be human.

Duncan is the Chief Correspondent of public radio's Biotech Nation and a frequent commentator on NPR's Morning Edition. He is a contributing editor to Portfolio, Discover, and Wired, and a columnist for Portfolio. His books include the international bestseller Calendar: Humanity's Epic Struggle to Determine a True and Accurate Year. He is a former special producer and correspondent for ABC's Nightline, and appears regularly on CNN and programs such as Today and Good Morning America.

Masterminds
Genius, DNA, and the Quest to Rewrite Life
(Harper Perennial, 2006)

James Watson, J. Craig Venter, Francis Collins, Cynthia Kenyon . . . you may not know them, but you should. They are the masterminds of genetics and biotechnology who want you to live to be 150 years old, to regenerate your heart and brain, to create synthetic life. For better or worse, they are about to alter life on earth forever.

Award-winning journalist David Ewing Duncan tells the remarkable stories of cutting-edge bioscientists, revealing their quirky, uniquely fascinating, sometimes vaguely unsettling personas as a means to understand their science and the astonishing implications of their work. This book seamlessly combines myth, biography, scholarship, and wit that poses the all-important question: Can we actually trust these masterminds?

The Geneticist Who Played Hoops with My DNA
(hardcover: William Morrow, 2005)

A highly original form of storytelling combining myth, biography, and the wit of Oliver Sacks, this is 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?

For three years, award-winning writer David Ewing Duncan has interviewed over 600 people, and spent time with masterminds that include James Watson, Sydney Brenner, Paul Berg, Francis Collins, Craig Venter, Cynthia Kenyon, and others. He has written an inventive narrative about science and personality, delving into stem cells, cloning, bioengineering, and genetics by telling the stories of the characters at the fulcrum of the science. He uses a unique method of tying in age-old stories and myths – Prometheus, Faustus, Eve, and Frankenstein – to ask the question: can we trust these scientists?

Duncan thinks we can, but society must closely watch them and their work; also, both scientists and the public must make more of an effort to publicly discuss and understand each others points of view. Duncan has attracted international attention for his column “Biotech and Creativity”; and for his writings and NPR commentaries. He makes a powerful case that this is the most important story of our time, perhaps of all human history – that a species has the power to self-evolve.

Calendar
Humanity's Epic Struggle to Determine a True and Accurate Year
(paperback: Harper Perennial, 2001)
International Bestseller -- 19 Languages

Excerpts
Calendar Index
The Year 2000 Will Be...

From the earliest recorded date (4236 B.C.), people have tried to organize their lives according to the movements of the sun, moon and stars--and have, for the most part, consistently gotten it wrong. In this irresistible volume, David Ewing Duncan takes us on an extraordinary journey through man's reckoning of time, ranging from one of the earliest calendars (a series of markings gouged into an eagle bone 13,000 years ago) to the atomic clocks of today, which measure time too well for an ever slowing Earth.

The adventure spans the world from Stonehenge to astronomically aligned pyramids at Giza, from Mayan observatories at Chichen Itza at 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 such as Galileo and Copernicus. Our present calendar system predates the invention of the telescope, the mechanical clock, and the concept of 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 full days? What did time mean to a farmer on the Rhine in 800 A.D.? What was daily life life 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 ever come to agree on what day it was? As our personal clocks tick faster and time becomes more precious each day, as we move toward the mathematically awesome threshold of a new millennium, here is a fresh, stimulating volume that answers--and raises--a host of fascinating questions about the nature of human timekeeping and the majestic historical forces that have produced the miracle of the calendar.

Hernando de Soto
A Savage Quest in the Americas
(paperback: University of Oklahoma Press, 1997)
(hardcover: Crown 1st ed., 1996)

A study of Hernando de Soto and his legendary expedition across North America examines the life of the Spanish conquistador, from his role in the conquest of Peru to his ill-fated journey through the wilderness of the New World and his destructive impact on the native peoples of the region.

Residents
The Perils and Promise of Educating Young Doctors
(Scribner, 1st ed., 1996)

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