After growing up in a South Carolina mill village, David L. Carlton never abandoned his fascination with the region's factories. Devoted to a career studying the industrialization of the American South, he is the author of Mill and Town in South Carolina (1982) and co-author (with Peter A. Coclanis) of The South, the Nation, and the World (2003). Carlton has also edited various texts and contributed chapters and essays to several books, including the Hub City's 2002 title, Textile Town, and Hub City Anthology 2 (2000).

He has published essays and articles in Southern Cultures, Encyclopedia of the Confederacy, Technology and Culture, and Journal of American History, among others.

Carlton is the recipient of fellowships and grants from the National Endowment for the Humanities and the American Philosophical Society. From 1992-1993, he was a Robert Penn Warren Center for the Humanities Fellow at Vanderbilt University; from 1994-1995, he was a National Humanities Center Fellow for Research Triangle Park, NC; and in 2001, he was named the Alfred D. Chandler Lecturer in Southern Business History from the Center for the Study of the American South at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.  Carlton is a graduate of Amherst College (BA) and Yale University (MA, M.Phil.). He has taught at Texas Tech University, Coastal Carolina College, and the University of South Carolina.

Currently, he is an Associate Professor at Vanderbilt University in Nashville. In addition to teaching and research, Carlton enjoys cycling, Sacred Harp singing, choral singing with the Nashville Symphony Chorus, and serving as an elder at Trinity Presbyterian Church.