David Epstein is a science journalist and author. His first book, The Sports Gene (2014), explored genetics and athletic performance. Range: Why Generalists Triumph in a Specialized World (2019) argues that breadth, late specialization, and match-quality exploration outperform the Tiger Woods / ten-thousand-hours narrative in most complex domains.
Epstein's own path mirrors the book: Arctic research scientist → crime reporter → Sports Illustrated senior writer → author. He began writing Range after Pat Tillman Foundation veterans worried their non-linear careers were liabilities; research convinced him the opposite.
He engages Kahneman/Klein on expertise, Flynn on abstraction, Gentner on analogy, Malamud on match quality, and Casadevall on despecializing science education.