Why The Banana is Absolutely Everything
Dan Koeppel is the author of three critically acclaimed books, his second, Banana: The Fate of the Fruit that Changed the World, was published in 2008, is now in its seventh printing and has been translated into five languages. Nobel Prize winning economist and New York Times columnist Paul Krugman has three times cited Koeppel’s book in his columns as “essential reading” for understanding today’s global economic crisis. The Boston Globe wrote: “In the hands of a lesser writer, the book's multiple personalities - it is at once a political and economic treatise, a scientific explication, and a cultural history - might have proved unwieldy. Koeppel, though, weaves all of these elements together seamlessly.”
His most recent book, Every Minute is a Day: A Doctor, an Emergency Room, and a City Under Siege, was published in 2021. It is the story of the first three months of Covid pandemic as experienced by the doctors, nurses, and medical staff of Montefiore Medical Center in the Bronx, New York. His first book, To See Every Bird on Earth: A Father, A Son, and A Lifelong Obsession, also has received much acclaim.
Banana was the subject of Dan’s full-length appearance on National Public Radio’s Fresh Air, which was repeated in September 2011 as part of that program’s food week event. He has appeared in over 100 radio and television appearances and is a frequent guest speaker at colleges, universities, libraries, and museums. He was a recent signer of the “Stellenbosch Declaration,” the result of an international effort to develop a concerted strategy to save endangered banana species.
An avid biker, Koeppel is also the author of The Extreme Sports Almanac, published in 1995, and co-author, with his friend and NBC television personality Bob Roll, of The Tour de France Companion.