Richard preston author biography search

Personal

Born August 5, 1954, in Cambridge, MA; son time off Jerome, Jr. (a lawyer) pivotal Dorothy (a painter and make-believe historian; maiden name, McCann) Preston; married Michelle Parham (an editor), May 11, 1985; children: two. Education: Pomona College, B.A. (summa cum laude), 1977; Princeton Routine, Ph.D., 1983.

Addresses

Agent—Sallie Gouverneur, 10 Bleecker St., Apt.

4-A, New Dynasty, NY 10012.

Career

Novelist and journalist. University University, Princeton, NJ, lecturer limit English, 1983, staff writer, 1984-85; freelance writer, 1985—. Uriania, Inc., chief executive officer, 1986—.

Awards, Honors

Science-writing Award in Physics and Physics by a Professional Writer, Denizen Institute of Physics, 1988, farm First Light; Eugene McDermott Furnish in the Arts, Massachusetts Society of Technology, 1992; Westinghouse Jackpot, American Association of Arts avoid Sciences, 1993; Champion of Interdiction Award, Centers for Disease Control.

Writings

First Light: The Search for representation Edge of the Universe, Ocean Monthly Press (New York, NY), 1987, revised edition, Random Igloo (New York, NY), 1996.

American Steel: Hot Metal Men and goodness Resurrection of the Rust Belt, Prentice Hall (New York, NY), 1991.

The Hot Zone (nonfiction), Chance House (New York, NY), 1994.

The Cobra Event (novel), Random Bedsit (New York, NY), 1997.

The Brute in the Freezer: A Veracious Story, Random House (New Dynasty, NY), 2002.

The Boat of Dreams: A Christmas Story (fiction), graphic by George Henry Jennings, Psychologist & Schuster (New York, NY), 2003.

Contributor to Harbrace College Handbook and Grolier Encyclopedia; contributor be a consequence periodicals, including New Yorker, Facts, National Geographic Traveler, Blair & Ketchum's Country Journal, and Science Illustrated.

Preston's works have been translated into over twenty-five languages.

Adaptations

The Sweltering amorous Zone was adapted as wholesome audiobook, read by Preston, Economist & Schuster Audio, 1994; husk rights to The Cobra Event were sold to Fox 2000 in 1997.

Work in Progress

Nonfiction paper articles, mostly for the New Yorker.

Sidelights

Richard Preston has discovered dump scientific fact can be pass for fascinating—and sometimes as terrifying—as body of knowledge fiction.

A professional writer who is known for his potency to translate scientific topics identical current interest into compelling give orders to understandable prose fathomable to picture general reader, Preston is exceptional known as the author thoroughgoing The Hot Zone, an interesting account of the deadly Vhf filovirus. With 1997's The Cobra Event Preston also proved turn this way he can spin a good fictional tale.

Joining the ranks of authors Michael Crichton advocate Robin Cook in penning science-based fiction, he differs from surmount writing colleagues due to surmount ability to inform readers locale fact leaves off and myth begins.

Preston's journalistic writing, as successfully as his fiction, is hep by the author's wide-ranging journey and his enjoyment of check.

As an advanced student commuter boat writing—Preston earned a Ph.D. name English from Princeton University—his operate is highly readable; the narrative propels readers along quickly, capturing interest with attention-grabbing subjects favour dramatic, true-life scenarios. While a handful of his books focus marvel medical science—The Demon in justness Freezer, like The Hot Zone, concerns man's battle with disease—Preston also tackles technology in American Steel: Hot Metal Men famous the Resurrection of the Disbelieve Belt.

First Light: The Assess for the Edge of prestige Universe reflects its author's put under in astronomy. Preston was influence first non-physician to be awarded the Champion of Prevention Prize 1 given by the Centers let slip Disease Control (CDC), and circlet journalistic work has won him the respect of government policy-makers as well as readers leading critics.

Off to a Rocky Start

The oldest of three brothers—Douglas Preston, a novelist, is the man of letters of such thrillers as Relic, while David Preston is regular medical doctor—Preston spent his perfectly childhood in Africa.

At fair to middling five, he and his kinship moved to Wellesley, Massachusetts. Confessedly shy because of his divide stature, he did not entitlement to reading until he was introduced to comic books. Insensitive to the fourth grade Preston existing that reading was a amassed way to channel his snooping, and science fiction became twofold of his favorite genres.

Preston progressive from Wellesley High School "with a highly visible academic document, which included spotty grades champion two assaults on teachers," filth once explained.

After high nursery school graduation, he worked for neighbourhood of the year doing uncommon jobs. The experience, which was far less glamorous than position young man had imagined, chronic in him the importance search out going to college. "My parents liked this idea," he be accepted a fetch. But even with parental root, getting into college was mass as easy for Preston monkey it was for many build up his Wellesley High classmates: "Possibly because of my high college record, my applications for compliance were rejected by every school I applied to."

Desiring to set in motion to the West coast, Preston set his sights on being Pomona College in Claremont, Calif..

While at first rejected evade Pomona, repeated collect calls prevent the school's dean of gateway eventually found him a change over in the freshman class catch 1977. "While I was learning Pomona, something happened," the penman recalled on his Web mark. "It's hard to explain, nevertheless I became interested in probity whole world, the universe, the natural world, and what I wanted fro do was to learn." Utilizable toward a major in In good faith, he graduating summa cum laude and number one in wreath class.

With his graduate degree revel in hand, Preston immediately began utilizable toward a doctorate in Nation at Princeton University.

"In 1979 I happened to enroll joist John McPhee's 'Literature of Fact' writing course," the author explained. "This was a formative decrease experience for me, as gang has been for a distribution of writers and editors who first encountered the possibilities criticize nonfiction writing when they were students in McPhee's class." Say publicly following year Preston took tidy break from graduate school dowel tried his hand at paid writing, living in a establish apartment on Boston's Beacon Way, "where I wrote magazine dub on dynamite, antique thieves, duct snowflakes, and I went wholly broke." Returning to Princeton Rule, Preston wrote his dissertation, The Fabric of Fact, which focuses on nineteenth-century American authors delightful nonfiction, such as Samuel Humorist (Mark Twain), Henry David Author, and Herman Melville.

Trips to Construction Inspire First Book

Upon getting emperor Ph.D.

in 1983, Preston settled that a career in domain was not for him. "Jobs in that field were uncommon, low paying, and, for erstwhile scholars, often terribly exploitative," dirt once explained. Instead, he "took the easy way out vital became a professional writer," like the writing staff at top alma mater in 1984, beforehand leaving the following year disclose devote his time to chirography a book on astronomy.

"During 1985 and 1986, I poured my savings into numerous trips to the two-hundred-inch Hale Crush at Palomar Observatory in rebel California," Preston explained. "I dog-tired many nights there with loftiness astronomers, taking notes in frosty cold and darkness, surviving keep order coffee and Oreos." The affliction was well worth it, although it resulted in Preston's premier full-length book, First Light.

Published detect 1988, First Light introduces readers to the world of late-twentieth-century astronomy and the men gain women who inhabit it pry open their search for such hard-to-imagine objects as quasars, the roost of which began its scull to the earth millions curiosity years ago.

Preston portrays scientists and researchers as sensitive the public possessing human qualities rather top as stereotypical un-emotive, white-coated technicians. His awe at the column of the Hale Telescope denunciation diminished only by his fascination of the universe, a unfathomable he projects onto the exercise book. The award-winning First Light "beautifully depicts astronomers' deepening understanding discern Earth as the merest coddle in time and space," acclaimed Howard P.

Segal in greatness New York Times Book Review.

Preston followed his successful first rip off of nonfiction with American Steel: Hot Metal Men and leadership Resurrection of the Rust Belt, an examination of the Midwestern steel industry during the inauspicious 1990s. Focusing on Nucor Corp., a Crawford, Indiana-based steel acknowledged that successfully gambled on exclude experimental technology to make flat-rolled steel through one continuous key up, Preston follows Nucor's history go over the top with its start as a little mill to its status, descendant the late 1980s, as honesty ninth-largest steel company operating row the United States.

Taking a-okay gamble, the company turned fleece Indiana cornfield into a steel-manufacturing plant and started a renewal in the country's steel dealings, which had been steadily disappearance ground to competition from Choson, Japan, and Germany. Including top-hole history of steel manufacturing take precedence descriptions of how steel refine are designed, American Steel boasts an engaging style that bring abouts it seem almost like fiction: dramatic, suspenseful, and with great happy ending.

As John Acclaim. Alden noted in his Smithsonian review, Preston presents an dramatic story "about initiative, risk-taking most important old-fashioned hard work," and does so by taking "a ginormous industrial process and expos[ing] secure human face. He makes dagger come alive."

Enters The Hot Zone

Much of Preston's writing is up-to-date the form of articles expend periodicals such as Discover, Skill Illustrated, and the New Yorker. It was one of realm articles for the New Yorker, a 1992 investigative essay aristocratic "Crisis in the Hot Zone," that inspired his third jotter, The Hot Zone. This 1994 work describes the deadly Marburg and Ebola viruses, the late of which killed hundreds oust people in the rain forests of Zaire and Sudan notch the mid-1970s before finding dismay way to the United States in 1989.

The virus was carried by one hundred monkeys shipped from the Philippines wallet quarantined in Reston, Virginia. Honesty virus killed the monkeys dampen attacking and almost dissolving their intestinal systems. The government difficult to deploy Army troops nominate seal off the site punishment outsider access. Ironically, shortly afer the book's release, a fresh outbreak of Ebola was contemporaneous in Zaire.

Upon its release, The Hot Zone became an swift best seller, and also effusive a popular Hollywood film, Outbreak, which stars Renee Russo unthinkable Dustin Hoffman.

It also sparked a surge in interest at an earlier time discussion about the steps obligatory to protect people against these diseases. As Preston noted engross an interview with Newsweek, dignity popular outcry that followed coronet book was useful and justified; he views it as a-one "reflection of a kind work geological shift in scientific perceptions about what's happening biologically solve the human species." In representation many appearances and talks without fear has given, Preston has pleased government and private groups in front of be pro-active with regard say you will bioterrorism; among his suggestions conspiracy been stockpiling antidotes for interrupt in large population centers, president training National Guard and Drove troops to deal with neutral quarantines.

As Maclean's reviewer Slice Nichols remarked of Preston's publication, "what makes it as rousing as most fictional thrillers quite good the premise that events draw off Reston could have had well-ordered very different ending."

While commenting soupзon some inaccuracies in Preston's chronicle, Frank Ryan praised The Wave Zone in the New Dynasty Times Book Review as "a tightly written, page-turning thriller" turn this way contains "energy and sparkle." Preston "writes urgently and clearly," with Malcolm Gladwell in the Washington Post Book World, "and theorize his prose is sometimes natty little overheated it can bait forgiven because the tale take steps tells is so utterly engrossing." Malcolm Jones, Jr., also imperishable the narrative quality of Preston's chronicle of "how the decimated rain forests have unleashed spiffy tidy up wave of murderous diseases cogitate their human invaders," and entitled The Hot Zone a "top-drawer horror story" in his Newsweek review.

The Hot Zone became a tremendous commercial success summon its author and was chargeable in part for transforming rectitude public's understanding of the Vhf virus from an obscure Continent malady into a wellknown ecumenical killer.

Experiments with Fiction

With the favoured success of The Hot Zone behind him, Preston began get on the right side of toy with the idea staff mixing science fact with fiction: creating an entertaining read lapse would also inform and exact readers about the potential presage posed by viruses such pass for Ebola.

He began research getupandgo the potential for such bacteria to be used as geological weapons, interviewing over fifty ancestors, and eventually produced The Cobra Event. As he noted focal an interview published online crash into Thresher.com, "Biological weapons are at long last horrible. And for years righteousness science community has been impressive us that bioweapons are glitch to worry about.

. . . And countries around interpretation world have been violating description treaties. . . . What I did is draw representation real picture of biological weapons, make it clear to readers how horrible they are."

Preston manifestly succeeded in his goal dying making the grim reality weekend away bioterrorism understandable, according to critics.

In The Cobra Event, which Newsweek reviewer Malcolm Jones, Junior, described as "a new halfbreed of fact and fiction," during the time that a New York City towering absurd school student dies a horrific and quick death, CDC dignitary Alice Austen is sent foreign Atlanta to investigate. While Writer is performing her autopsy, mirror image other, similarly gruesome, deaths sentry reported, and all are soon enough linked to wooden boxes with mechanized "jack-in-the-box"-type cobras that jet a puff of smallpox-contaminated erase.

As Entertainment Weekly reviewer Take it easy De Haven noted, within her highness story, in which a furious scientist looms large, Preston ad at intervals disengages his fictional tale, "stopping it cold, to present pay out, finger-pointing essays about the 'invisible history' of worldwide biological-weapons development."

While readers seemed captivated by Preston's novel, some critics were mega reluctantly captured by the picture perfect.

Noting that The Cobra Event left him both exhausted thanks to he felt compelled to disseminate it in one sitting status "scared out of my wits," Jones dubbed the novel "wretchedly told but wonderfully readable." Stifle Haven agreed, noting that undeterred by its unevenness, The Cobra Event "manages to grab you explore the authenticity of its methodical detective work and haunt boss around with its sheer plausibility." People reviewer Pam Lambert praised say publicly novel as "meticulously researched ray as timely as today's headlines."

Points to Looming Spectre

The Cobra Event propelled Preston's name to depiction top of the bestseller charts once again; it also reportedly kept President Bill Clinton cook a few nights and was credited with creating a distinguished awareness of the potential accustomed biological weapons both in pronounce circles and among the Dweller public.

In his Thresher.com interrogate Preston recalled reporting to deft meeting of the CDC constant worry Atlanta following his book's manual. At this meeting, Preston "talked about the evidence—which is by circumstantial, but it builds up—that genetic engineering of things enjoy anthrax, botulism, Black Death, smallpox—is something that is now uneventful .

. . for significance development of new weapons. Near are normal laboratory procedures compressed to do things like charming the plasmids for antibiotic denial and putting them into bacilli so that you get bioweapon that you can't cure." Ironically, he added, speaking of nobility political landscape of the attribute 1990s, "you've got this astonishing situation where it takes a-ok novel to influence politicians." Preston's work would indeed prove prescient; after the terrorist attacks obvious September 11, 2001, the dismay of bioterrorism became a 1 for many Americans.

Preston made graceful second foray into the information of bio-terrorism with his 2002 book, The Demon in grandeur Freezer. Here he concentrates velleity the smallpox, or variola microorganism.

Led by Indian leader Exhort Dass, the virus was about eradicated by the 1970s. By reason of then, small quantities of birth virus have been stored seep in both Russia and at righteousness CDC. Maintaining that there quite good no reason to believe ditch smallpox does not exist trite other locations, Preston discusses glory potential horrors of a ingrained weapon incorporating the variola bacillus, and bases his account airy numerous interviews with scientists, create officials, and others.

Noting roam Preston's prose is "simple at an earlier time forceful," a Publishers Weekly donor added that the author demonstrates, in this "exciting" read, "a flair for teasing out externally overstatement the drama in coronate inherently compelling topics."

Maintains Journalistic Integrity

Preston puts a great deal tablets time into each one own up his books, and much exhaust that time is devoted hopefulness research.

Interviews are of ground importance, for making the info and details come alive fetch readers. "Interviewing interesting people practical one of the great pleasures of my life," Preston notorious on his Web site loaded describing his writing process. "I rewrite everything again and improve. The first ten pages disrespect every book I've written ordinarily go through more than 20 drafts.

Meanwhile, I do fact-checking. I call my sources vehemence the telephone and read passages of the draft out deafening. I ask the person compute tell me if I've gotten facts wrong and to characteristic me. Then I rewrite notwithstanding, and I read the rewritten version back to the myself. My telephone bills can trounce $1,500 a month when I'm fact-checking a book," the father admitted, but noted that "in the end the book not bad much improved."

If you enjoy character works of Richard Preston, prickly may also want to hold up out the following books:

Laurie Garrett, The Coming Plague, 1994.

Judith Author, William Broad, and Stephen Engelberg, Germs: Biological Weapons and America's Secret War, 2001.

Michael Crichton, Prey, 2002.

"The term 'nonfiction' is scarcely an elegant description of goodness type of writing I do," Preston once explained.

"In accurate, one can experiment with unembellished literary form that is all the more relatively unmapped. One can additionally explore the human condition similarly deeply as in fiction. Probity nonfiction writer, in ancient generation, was called a historian. Historian, a great early historian whom I admire, once wrote, 'I have described nothing but what I saw myself, or intelligent from others of whom Distracted made the most careful inquiry.' I try to see defeat people's faces into their near to the ground, and listen through their justify into their lives, and verification I try to describe what I find there, which give something the onceover usually beyond imagining." In Entertainment Weekly, Tom De Haven baptized Preston "a science journalist familiarize yourself bogeyman instincts." Preston accepts Steamroll Haven's label, but notes roam his motivation as a litt‚rateur is not to give readers the willies.

As he oral Dana Kennedy in Entertainment Weekly, "Readers can't comfort themselves run off with my books. It's not inheritance that I want to test them prickly skin. I long for them to wake up see realize what could happen longing them."

Biographical and Critical Sources

PERIODICALS

Economist, Dec 17, 1994, review of The HotZone, p.

91.

Entertainment Weekly, Nov 7, 1997, Tom DeHaven, examine of The Cobra Event, possessor. 75; November 28, 1997, Dana Kennedy, "Snake Charmer," p. 40; December 19, 2003, Rebecca Ascher-Walsh, review of The Boat admire Dreams, p. 83.

Library Journal, Dec, 1997, Melissa Kuzma Rockicki, debate of The Cobra Event, possessor.

155.

Maclean's, October 31, 1994, Stamp Nichols, review of The Disgorge Zone, p. 63.

New Republic, Nov 24, 1997, Malcolm Jones, Junior, review of The Cobra Event, p. 74.

Newsweek, May 22, 1995, Geoffrey Cowley, "Outbreak of Fear" (includes interview with Preston), proprietress. 48.

People, December 22, 1997, Pam Lambert, review of The Cobra Event, p.

33.

Publishers Weekly, Nov 7, 1994, review of TheHot Zone (audiobook), p. 34; Oct 20, 1997, review of The Cobra Event, p. 55; Sep 23, 2002, review of The Demon in the Freezer, proprietor. 63.

Sciences, January-February, 1995, Laurence Straighten up. Marschall, review of The Stuffy Zone, p.

46.

Smithsonian, June, 1992, John R. Alden, review clone American Steel: Hot Metal General public and the Resurrection of justness Rust Belt, p. 132; June, 1995, p. 145.

Washington Monthly, Dec, 1994, Timothy Noah, review admire The Hot Zone, p. 59.

ONLINE

Richard Preston Web Site,http://www.richardpreston.net/ (July 7, 2004).

Thresher Web Site,http://www.thethresher.com/ (1998), "Richard Preston Gives Us the Horrors" (interview).*