David Herbert Donald (born 1920) is the Charles Warren Professor of American History (emeritus in 1991) at Harvard University and the author of well over thirty books, including the definitive biography of American Civil War-era Massachusetts senator Charles Sumner (Charles Sumner and the Coming of the Civil War). He specializes in the Civil War and Reconstruction periods, with interests in related topics such as American reform movements.

A native of Mississippi and a popular instructor as well as respected historian, he has also taught at Johns Hopkins University, Princeton University, Oxford University, Columbia University, and Smith College. He won two Pulitzer Prizes, for the Sumner biography and Look Homeward: A Life of Thomas Wolfe, and the Lincoln Prize for his 1996 New York Times bestseller biography of Abraham Lincoln (Lincoln). Fittingly, he resides in Lincoln, Massachusetts.