David Levinson is a well-known editor of major print reference publications and a respected cultural anthropologist specializing in contemporary social issues. For twenty years, he was the chief administrator at a major research institute at Yale University, and he has personally overseen and edited thirty-seven volumes—some 10 million words, or the equivalent of the Encyclopedia Britannica— in the past eight years. Levinson has a unique ability to synthesize and organize vast bodies of information. He has published widely on ethnicity, social problems, and human relationships and is “well known for his multivolume encyclopedic works that describe world cultures” (Choice 1998).

After completing his Ph.D. dissertation, a definitive study of cross-cultural research methods still in print as Toward Explaining Human Culture, Levinson was for twenty-one years on the staff, and later vice president, of the Human Relations Area Files (HRAF) at Yale University. HRAF was founded in 1949 as a research institute that to collect, organize, and distribute information on the countries and cultures of the world. In addition to responsibility for book publishing program of HRAF, he helped to develop the CrossCultural CD and the Electronic HRAF and has acted as consultant on other electronic projects. He also holds a master's degree in public administration from New York University.

After leaving HRAF in 1995 to found Berkshire Reference Works with Karen Christensen, Levinson continued as a research associate and senior editor of American Immigrant Cultures, a project he had begun at HRAF as an extension of the Encyclopedia of World Cultures. His work as an anthropologist has focused on social problems and cross-cultural understanding. His first work, a study of the Bowery in New York, was published when he was still an undergraduate. He has published and taught on topics including ethnic relations, multiculturalism, substance abuse, homelessness, violence against women and children—including Family Violence in Cross-Cultural Perspective (Sage 1989). He has written dozens of scholarly articles, including the lead article in a UN Refugees issue on ethnic relations.

In 1992, he was a visiting scholar at the National Museum of Ethnology in Kyoto, Japan, and he has received research grants from the Connecticut Humanities Council and the National Institutes of Mental Health.

Levinson currently serves as Berkshire's president and project director for several major reference works in progress. These include the six-volume Encyclopedia of Modern Asia and three new volumes in the ongoing Religion & Society series: the Encyclopedia of Religion and War, the Encyclopedia of Religious Rituals, and the Encyclopedia of Religious Freedom. Berkshire is also at work on additional reference works for Sage, including the Encyclopedia of Community, the Encyclopedia of Leadership, and the Encyclopedia of Homelessness.

Other reference publications edited by Levinson include the Encyclopedia of Human Emotions, the Encyclopedia of Cultural Anthropology, the Encyclopedia of Marriage and the Family, and the Encyclopedia of World Sport.