David Dobbs, author of Reef Madness and the #1 Kindle-Single bestseller My Mother's Lover, writes features and essays for publications including the Atlantic, the New York Times Magazine, National Geographic, Wired, the Guardian, and other publications. Several of his stories have been chosen for leading anthologies, the most recent being "The Tight Collar: The New Science of Choking Under Pressure," in Best American Sports Writing 2011, and his much-discussed feature for the Atlantic, "The Orchid Children," for Ecco/HarperPerennial's Best American Science Writing 2010.
He is now writing his fourth book, The Orchid and the Dandelion (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt) which expands on his Atlantic article to explore the genetics of temperament — and the idea that the genes underlying some of our most troublesome traits and behaviors also generate some of our greatest strengths and accomplishments.
His most recent previous book, Reef Madness (Pantheon, 2005), looks at a long argument that Charles Darwin had about how coral reefs form; Oliver Sacks found it "brilliantly written, almost unbearably poignant." He lives in Vermont, with frequent trips to New York, London, DC, and other points distant.