David Gessner is an American essayist, memoirist, nature writer, editor, and cartoonist. Gessner was born in Boston, Massachusetts and grew up in Worcester, Massachusetts. He attended Harvard College where he worked at the Harvard Crimson drawing political cartoons, most notably a drawing of Ronald Reagan urinating on an unemployed man in the gutter, entitled "The Trickle Down Theory". He was awarded his degree in 1983. He is married to the novelist Nina de Gramont.