David Dunaway's first book, How Can I Keep From Singing, the first biography of folk musician and social activist Pete Seeger, was based on his doctoral dissertation at the University of California, Berkeley, and first released in 1981.
In addition, Dunaway is also the editor of Oral History: An Interdisciplinary Anthology (with Willa Baum; second edition, Rowman & Littlefield, 1996), and the author of Huxley in Hollywood (Harper Collins, 1990), Writing the Southwest (with Sarah Spurgeon; revised edition, University of New Mexico Press, 2003), Aldous Huxley Recollected (AltaMira/Rowman & Littlefield, 1998), Across the Tracks: A Route 66 Story (in press), Oral History on Route 66: A Manual (National Park Service, 2005), Singing Out: An Oral History of America's Folk Music Revivals (with Molly Beer; Oxford, 2010), A Pete Seeger Discography (Scarecrow Press/Rowman, 2011), and A Route 66 Companion (University of Texas Press, 2012).
In 2008-9, he produced "Pete Seeger" on PRI, three, one-hour documentaries airing on more than 300 stations and winning Best of Show: Audio from the Broadcast Education Association.
Dunaway has written extensively for the popular media since 1973, with articles on music, social activism, and oral history appearing in venues from Mother Jones to the Village Voice and the New York Times.
In 2004, his writing on the Danish government's efforts to derail the world's oldest experiment in anarchy, Christiania, was carried by the San Francisco Chronicleand National Public Radio's Morning Edition.