His father is of U.S. Jewish origin, and mother from Greece: both are writers, D. D. Guttenplan and Maria Margaronis.
His first two publications were Stephane Hessel's Time for Outrage! (Indignez-vous!) and D. D. Guttenplan's American Radical: The Life and Times of I. F. Stone.
Guttenplan’s account of the case, The Holocaust on Trial, was described by Ian Buruma in the New Yorker as “a mixture of superb reportage and serious reflection—about the role of Jewish identity politics in the United States, anti-Semitism in Britain, the historiography of the Cold War, and so on.”
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D.D. Guttenplan was educated in the Philadelphia and Memphis public school systems and has a degree in philosophy from Columbia University, a degree in English Literature from Cambridge University, and a doctorate in History from the University of London.