David Sherman Lamb was born in Boston, Massachusetts on March 5, 1940. He began his journalism career at 14, when he wrote a weekly column for The Milwaukee Journal about the Braves leaving Boston for Milwaukee from the perspective of a teenager. He graduated from the School of Journalism at the University of Maine in 1962. He worked for The Okinawa Morning Star and United Press International before joining The Los Angeles Times. He left the paper in 2004 after 34 years. His first book, The Africans, was published in 1983. His other books included The Arabs, Stolen Season: A Journey Through America and Baseball's Minor Leagues, Over the Hills: A Midlife Escape Across America by Bicycle, and… Vietnam, Now: A Reporter Returns. He also worked on the PBS documentary Vietnam Passage: Journeys from War to Peace in 2002. He died from lymphoma and esophageal cancer on June 5, 2016 at the age of 76.