Researching David Cohen

Cohen was a local Democratic and community leader during the mayoral administrations of Philadelphia Mayors Joseph Clark and Richardson Dilworth, a councilman during the administration of Mayor James Hugh Joseph Tate and the police commissionership of Mayor Frank L. Rizzo, and a councilman in the mayoral administrations of Mayors William J. Green, W. Wilson Goode, Edward G. Rendell, and John F. Street. He served nearly 14 full years in City Council with future mayor Michael Nutter (who was elected mayor two years after Cohen's death). His views on city issues were often at odds with the majority in city government. Rendell described him as the most tenacious political leader he ever met.

Cohen supported labor unions, collective bargaining, racial integration, desegregation, and equal opportunity since the late 1930s. He claimed he had anticipated trends of increasing support for such positions. He campaigned with planks of civil rights, workers rights, good government, constituent service and geographic inclusiveness.

In his first term on the City Council, he successfully sponsored in 1970 an air pollution measure, and emphasized it in his next campaign. His chemical right-to-know bill, in 1982, was one of the nation's first. He opposed waste incineration within the city, successfully in the case of a proposed plant near the Philadelphia Naval Yard. During his tenure, two long existing waste facilities were shut down. He claimed that these curtailments in waste facility operations produced a saving of $1.5 billion in trash disposal costs over thirty years and enhanced the attractiveness of the city areas of South Philadelphia, Northern Liberties, and Roxborough as targets for development.

In 1995, Cohen declared himself "a Franklin D. Roosevelt Democrat", and thereafter refused any other public comment on supporting political alliances in the city.

At his death in 2005 at age 90, Cohen was one of the oldest American elected leaders in office, serving at large on the City Council, and thus representing all the city's 1.5 million residents. (U.S. Senators Thurmond and Byrd each also reached the age of 90 while representing a U.S. constituency with a population of a million or more, before and after him, respectively.)

Cohen received his PhD from the University of London. He taught at Johns Hopkins University, and was later professor of anthropology and history and director of the Program of African Studies at Northwestern University.

With E. S. Atieno Odhiambo, he wrote on the multiple investigations into the 1990 disappearance and death of Kenya’s Foreign Minister, Robert Ouko.

Cohen created four New York Times bestsellers: A Day in the Life of America (1986), A Day in the Life of the Soviet Union (1987), Christmas in America (1988), and America 24/7 (2003). His 2009 book, Obama: The Historic Front Pages was a USA Today and Wall Street Journal bestseller. His 2008 book, What Matters combined photo-reportage about essential issues of our time with essays by prominent commentators including Samantha Power, Jeffrey Sachs and Bill McKibben. The Chicago Tribune called the book, "Powerful and passionate."

He also wrote a travelogue, One Year Off (1999), which chronicles a rambling 16-month trip around the world by land, air, and sea with his three children, Kara, William, and Lucas. The San Francisco Chronicle called the book "honest, reflective, and often uproariously funny,". The New York Times was less flattering, calling it, "a book that proves it is also possible to go almost everywhere and learn almost nothing."

Cohen wrote a second travelogue in 2016, entitled The Wrong Dog. The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette said “Despite the adorable puppy portrait on the cover, the book is more than the story of Simba and the cross-country road trip. It’s a beautifully written memoir... funny, sweet, and sad.” Cohen was born in Buffalo, New York, grew up in Erie, Pennsylvania, and lived in Manhattan for ten years before settling in Marin County, California. He graduated from Yale University in 1977 with a degree in English literature. His honors include a National Jewish Book Award, the American Jewish Committee's humanitarian award, a Catholic Press Association Award and a silver medal from the king of Spain for the promotion of Spanish tourism.

In 2018 The Wrong Dog won an International Book Award, a National Indie Excellence Award and an Independent Press Award, all in the animal and pet books category.

Cohen delivered the keynote speech at RailsConf2012, a conference dedicated to Ruby on Rails, an open source web application framework for the Ruby programming language.

He and Brad Feld co-authored Do More Faster: Techstars Lessons to Accelerate Your Startup.