DAYTON DUNCAN

“Most often it was everyday people who changed the course of American history." — Dayton Duncan

Duncan is the author of thirteen books, most recently, with Ken Burns, COUNTRY MUSIC: AN ILLUSTRATED HISTORY, the companion book to their eight-part documentary, which earned a Western Heritage Award and two Spur Awards.

Duncan and Burns have collaborated for nearly 30 years on documentaries, including THE WEST, which won the Erik Barnouw Award from the Organization of American Historians and LEWIS & CLARK: THE JOURNEY OF THE CORPS OF DISCOVERY, which attained the second-highest ratings in the history of PBS. Duncan was also writer and producer of THE NATIONAL PARKS: AMERICA’S BEST IDEA, which won two Emmy awards — for outstanding nonfiction series and outstanding writing for nonfiction programming; and writer and producer of THE DUST BOWL, a two-part series about the worst man-made ecological disaster in American history, broadcast in November 2012, winning a CINE Golden Eagle and a Western Heritage award; his script won a Spur Award and was nominated for an Emmy.

Duncan has served as a consultant or consulting producer on all of Burns’s other documentaries, beginning with THE CIVIL WAR and including BASEBALL, JAZZ, THE WAR, and THE VIETNAM WAR, among others.

Prior to his documentary work, Duncan served as chief of staff to New Hampshire Gov. Hugh Gallen; deputy national press secretary for Walter Mondale’s presidential campaign in 1984; and national press secretary for Michael Dukakis’s 1988 presidential campaign. President Bill Clinton appointed him chair of the American Heritage Rivers Advisory Committee and Secretary of Interior Bruce Babbitt appointed him to the board of the National Park Foundation.

In the spring of 2009, the director of the National Park Service named Duncan as an Honorary Park Ranger, an honor bestowed on fewer than 50 people in history. He has served on the boards of the Student Conservation Association and the National Conservation Lands Foundation, and as a member of the advisory committee for the 2016 centennial of the National Park Service.

Born and raised in Indianola, Iowa, Duncan graduated from the University of Pennsylvania in 1971 with a degree in German literature and was also a fellow at Harvard’s Shorenstein Center for Press, Politics and Public Policy. He holds honorary doctorates from Franklin Pierce University, Keene State College and Drake University.

For the last fifty years he has lived New Hampshire, where he makes his home in the small town of Walpole with his wife, Dianne.