David Owen

David Owen has been a staff writer for The New Yorker since 1991. Before joining The New Yorker, he was a contributing editor at The Atlantic Monthly and, prior to that, a senior writer at Harper’s. He is also a contributing editor at Golf Digest and one of The Fifty Funniest American Writers. He is the author of more than a dozen books: High School, about four months he spent pretending to be a high-school student; None of the Above, an exposé of the standardized-testing industry; The Man Who Invented Saturday Morning, a collection of his pieces from Harper’s and The Atlantic Monthly; The Walls Around Us: A Thinking Person’s Guide to How a House Works; Around the House, a collection of essays about domestic life; The First National Bank of Dad: The Best Way to Teach Kids About Money; Copies in Seconds, about the invention of the Xerox machine; and Sheetrock & Shellac, a sequel to The Walls Around Us. In addition, he has written four books about golf—My Usual Game, The Making of the Masters, The Chosen One: Tiger Woods and the Dilemma of Greatness, and Hit & Hope—and he co-edited a collection of golf stories entitled Lure of the Links. His recent book Green Metropolis: Why Living Smaller, Living Closer, and Driving Less are the Keys to Sustainability grew from a widely discussed 2004 New Yorker essay called “Green Manhattan.” His latest book is The Conundrum: How Scientific Innovation, Increased Efficiency, and Good Intentions Can make Our Energy and Climate Problems Worse. He lives in Washington, Connecticut, with his wife, the writer Ann Hodgman. They have two grown children, both of whom are also writers.