David Talbot

The book has stirred debate about the history of the CIA. In a review for the San Francisco Chronicle, Glenn C. Altschuler stated, "Talbot’s indictment is long, varied and sensational." Altschuler wrote: "Animated by conspiracy theories, the speculations and accusations in his book often run far ahead of the evidence, even for those of us inclined to believe the worst about Allen Dulles."

Talbot is from a media and entertainment family. He is the son of longtime character actor and founding member of the Screen Actors Guild, Lyle Talbot, and brother of documentary producer and former child actor Stephen Talbot, of physician Cynthia Talbot of Portland, Oregon, and of journalist Margaret Talbot, a staff writer at The New Yorker. Talbot is married to writer Camille Peri, co-editor of the national bestseller Mothers Who Think, with whom he has two children. His son Joe Talbot wrote and directed the 2019 film The Last Black Man in San Francisco.

In 2015, Talbot was announced as the editor of Hot Books, a new nonfiction imprint of Skyhorse Publishing. In 2016, Talbot became a columnist for the San Francisco Chronicle.

Talbot's book Season of the Witch: Enchantment, Terror, and Deliverance in the City of Love, about the wild and bloody birth of "San Francisco values", was published in spring 2012. Season of the Witch received starred reviews in Publishers Weekly and Kirkus Reviews, and was described as "enthralling, news-driven history" (San Francisco Chronicle), "energetic, highly entertaining storytelling" (Boston Globe), and "an enthralling – and harrowing – account of how the 1967 Summer of Love gave way to 20 or so winters of discontent" (Washington Post).

David Talbot's sister, Margaret, has written a biography of their father, Lyle Talbot, and a memoir of their family life, The Entertainer: Movies, Magic and My Father's Twentieth Century (Riverhead Books, 2012).

Talbot's book Devil Dog: The Amazing True Story of the Man Who Saved America chronicles the life and exploits of antiwar U.S. Marine General Smedley Darlington Butler. The book, which was part of an illustrated history series called Pulp History, is a collaboration with Zap Comix artist Spain Rodriguez. Devil Dog, which was published by Simon & Schuster in fall 2010, won praise from The New York Times, which called the Pulp History series "rip-roaring nonfiction tales with enough purple prose, gory illustrations and va-va-va-voom women to lure in even reluctant teenage male readers".

In 2008, Talbot launched a media production company with his siblings called The Talbot Players, named after their late father's theater troupe. The company produced books, films and documentaries. In addition to the Pulp History series for Simon & Schuster, the company developed a documentary TV series about global music for PBS called "Sound Tracks: Music Without Borders".

Before stepping down as Salon's CEO and editor-in-chief in 2005, Talbot stabilized the financially rocky web enterprise. Talbot returned briefly as Salon CEO in 2011 but has since left the company.

Salon is a web magazine based in San Francisco. Talbot has characterized Salon as aiming to be a "smart tabloid". In 1996, Time magazine picked Salon as the web site of the year. Originally created to cover books and popular culture, the web site became increasingly politicized during the Clinton impeachment drama in the late 1990s. Salon broke from the mainstream press by defending the Clinton presidency and investigating the right-wing prosecutorial apparatus headed by Kenneth Starr and Rep. Henry Hyde, whose own infidelity Salon exposed.

David Talbot (born September 22, 1951) is an American journalist, author and media executive. He is the founder, former CEO and editor-in-chief of an early web magazine, Salon. Talbot founded Salon in 1995. The magazine gained a large following and broke several major national stories. It was described by Entertainment Weekly as one of the Net's "few genuine must-reads".