David Wallechinsky

David Wallechinsky (born 5 February 1948) has worked as a commentator for NBC Olympic coverage and is the author of many Olympic reference books and other reference books. He is a Jewish-American. He is the author of The Complete Book of the Summer Olympics and The Complete Book of the Winter Olympics series. He is also known for his work on The People's Almanac and The Book of Lists series. He splits his time between Santa Monica, California and the south of France.

With Michael Medved (who later became a film critic), Wallechinsky was the co-author of What Really Happened to the Class of '65, a series of interviews with their fellow high school graduates from Palisades High School in California ten years afterward. In the 1980s, Wallechinsky went on to follow with Midterm Report: The Class of '65: Chronicles of an American Generation.

He is the son of author and screenwriter Irving Wallace. When David was conducting genealogical research on his family, he discovered that the family's original last name was Wallechinsky and subsequently legally changed his surname.

He has compiled the list of "The World’s 10 Worst Dictators" for Parade magazine for the last several years. In 2006, this subject became a book entitled: Tyrants: The World’s 20 Worst Living Dictators. These men are: Omar al-Bashir (Sudan), Kim Jong-il (North Korea), Than Shwe (Burma), Robert Mugabe (Zimbabwe), Islam Karimov (Uzbekistan), Hu Jintao (China), King Abdullah (Saudi Arabia), Saparmurat Niyazov (Turkmenistan), Seyed Ali Khamanei (Iran), Teodoro Obiang Nguema (Equatorial Guinea), Muammar Gaddafi (Libya), King Mswati III (Swaziland), Pervez Musharraf (Pakistan), Aleksandr Lukashenko (Belarus), Fidel Castro (Cuba), Isaias Afwerki (Eritrea), Bashar al-Assad (Syria), Meles Zenawi (Ethiopia), Paul Biya (Cameroon), and Choummaly Sayasone (Laos). There is a 21st chapter on the "special case" of George W. Bush (USA), which is not mentioned on the book's US cover.