Dave’s work
Here are dozens of links to some of Dave’s work over the decades, published in newspapers and magazines and broadcast on TV. We hope it helps researchers from students to journalists and historians.
We’ve arranged the links by subject, with brief descriptions of what the stories are about. Some websites might require you to register.
The Arab-Israeli Conflict, 1979-1984
After five years in Israel, Dave had collected a thick file of interviews on stereotyping and fraught interactions between Arabs and Jews, which resulted in this book, winner of the Pulitzer Prize for general non-fiction: Arab and Jew: Wounded Spirits in a Promised Land. It has been updated and revised and is now in its third edition. (link)
Based on the book, Dave and Emmy-winning and Oscar-nominated filmmaker Robert Gardner made this PBS film, which won a duPont-Columbia Award: Arab and Jew: Wounded Spirits in a Promised Land. (link)
Some years later, they did this follow-up PBS film, “Arab and Jew: Return to the Promised Land.” (link)
Toward the end of his tour in Israel, Dave wrote up his research in a four-part series for The New York Times on mutual misperceptions among Arabs and Jews. The series was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in international reporting:
Part 1, A1: Dec. 27, 1983 (link)
Part 2, p. A1: Dec. 28, 1983 (link)
Part 3, A2: Dec. 29, 1983 (link)
Part 4, A1: Dec. 30, 1983 (link)
Dave covered the 1982 war in Lebanon and, once the Palestine Liberation Organization had been expelled by Israel, found Lebanese suddenly free to tell of their suffering living under the PLO. (link)
Dave’s interest in what Israeli and Arab schoolchildren learn about the other side has driven much of his reporting, including this November 2015 piece in The New Yorker on the need for textbook reforms. (link)
The Vietnam War
Dave covered the U.S. war in Vietnam for the New York Times from 1973 to 1975. An encounter with a young woman who had been brutally tortured and handcuffed to a hospital bed propelled Dave into months of investigation - and resulted in this three-part series in the Times on political arrests by South Vietnam:
Torture and Political Prisoners in S. Vietnam, Part 1 (link)
Saigon’s Military Courts Dominate Judicial System, Part 2 (link)
To Saigon, All Dissenters Are Foes, All Foes Red, Part 3 (link)
In 1997, Dave was the only print reporter allowed to sit in on high-level discussions in Hanoi between former U.S. and North Vietnamese officials, examining how they had missed opportunities to halt the war by diplomacy. Organized by former Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara, the conference produced significant insights, reported by Dave in The New York Times Magazine.
The Soviet Union, 1975-1979
Dave usually tries to get inside people’s minds, to the extent that they will allow, and dig beneath the surface of the news. One example in his coverage of the Soviet Union was an examination of the uneasy push and pull of religion in the socialist state, published in The New York Times.
The Coexistence of Russian Communism and Christianity (link)
During a three-month newspaper strike, Dave had a respite from covering breaking news in Moscow and the time to reflect and report on deeper issues in Soviet society. One result was this two-part series in the Times:
Collective Ethic in Soviet Is Eroded As Interest in Private Life Increases (link)
Russians Covet Western Affluence But Find Democratic Ideals Alien (link)
The research led to the publication of his first book, the best-seller Russia: Broken Idols, Solemn Dreams (link), which he wrote in Jerusalem during late nights and early mornings while covering Israel. An adapted excerpt was published in The New York Times Magazine in 1983.
When the famed pro-democracy dissident Andrei Sakharov died, Dave drew from his many hours in Sakharov’s modest apartment to write this appreciation.
In 1989, just over two years before the break-up of the Soviet Union, Dave spent weeks for The New Yorker tapping into the surge in nationalism in Estonia, then still a Soviet republic. (link)
Hungary’s lurch out of Communism was also chronicled by Dave the same year.
When Gorbachev came to power and liberalized Soviet politics and economics, Dave returned on reporting trips to Moscow for The New Yorker. One report focused on the moment of suspension between the old and new regimes, the other on the suddenly-free politics of a local Moscow neighborhood:
After the Coup (link)
The Politics of Neighborhood (link)
The United States
Back home, Dave turned his attention to three of the most vexing problems facing America: race, poverty and the struggle between civil liberties and security. His five years criss-crossing the country interviewing blacks and whites yielded the book that is his favorite, mainly because of the deep education that it provided him: A Country of Strangers: Blacks and Whites in America. (link)
The work also produced numerous op-ed pieces, including this prescient examination of racism in police departments.
His examination of poverty in his best-selling book, The Working Poor: Invisible in America, has propelled the issue into many college classrooms, where it is required reading. (link)
From the book, Dave excerpted this 2004 Times Magazine profile of Caroline Payne, who has fought against the whirlpool of poverty her entire life:
After the 9/11 terrorist attacks on New York’s World Trade Center (on September 11, 2001), Dave wrote two books on civil liberties, The Rights of the People (link) and Rights at Risk. (link)
They examine how the Bill of Rights of the U.S. Constitution plays out in everyday American life. He spent weeks at a federal public defender’s office, going through case files, interviewing lawyers, attending trials, and accompanying police units on anti-gun and anti-drug operations. He also confronted the slide into torture of suspected terrorists, in this 2011 piece in The New Yorker:
While detailing the legal underpinnings of civil liberties, Dave also came to realize that the limits imposed on speech by society and culture are often far different than what is defined by law. His book Freedom of Speech: Mightier Than the Sword (link) examines the limits and pathways of speech in the many dimensions opened by the digital age. He described one phenomenon - the rapid, online spread of the anti-Islamic movement - in 2015 in the New Yorker: