Background
Richard Preston was born on August 5, 1954, in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States, and grew up in Wellesley, a suburb of Boston. One of three children he was a shy child and small for his age and had difficulty learning to read.
1994
Richard Preston talks about the latest Ebola outbreak and the spread of the virus to the United States in 1994.
1994
Richard Preston in 1994.
2007
Richard Preston at The Daily Show with Jon Stewart in 2007.
2012
Richard Preston at Redwood National and State Parks in 2012. Photo by Jim Campbell-Spickler.
2019
Richard Preston with Jen Schwartz, Doron Weber, and Dr. Wan Yang attend Tribeca TV The Hot Zone during the 2019 Tribeca Film Festival at SVA Theater on April 30, 2019, in New York City.
2019
Richard Preston at Tribeca TV The Hot Zone during the 2019 Tribeca Film Festival at SVA.
50 Rice Street Wellesley, Norfolk, MA 02482 United States
Wellesley High School where Richard Preston studied.
Princeton University, Princeton, NJ 08544, United States
Princeton University where Richard Preston received his Doctor of Philosophy degree.
333 N College Way, Claremont, CA 91711, United States
Pomona College where Richard Preston studied.
Richard Preston at 2019 Tribeca Film Festival.
Richard Preston at Screening Of National Geographic's The Hot Zone.
Richard Preston with Michael Smit at National Geographic Premiere of The Hot Zone.
Richard Preston on TED talks.
Richard Preston
Richard Preston on Dugout on the Moa-Makona River.
Richard Preston
Richard Preston
(In First Light, Richard Preston demonstrates his gift for...)
In First Light, Richard Preston demonstrates his gift for creating an exciting and absorbing narrative around a complex scientific subject - in this case the efforts by astronomers at the Palomar Observatory in the San Gabriel Mountains of California to peer to the farthest edges of space through the Hale Telescope, attempting to solve the riddle of the creation of the universe.
https://www.amazon.com/First-Light-Search-Edge-Universe/dp/0812991850/?tag=2022091-20
1987
(A chronicle of the efforts of America's ninth largest ste...)
A chronicle of the efforts of America's ninth largest steel company to build a new steel plant in the Midwest's Rust Belt presents true-life characters and suspense in its exploration of the American steel industry
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/013029604X/?tag=2022091-20
1991
(The bestselling landmark account of the first emergence o...)
The bestselling landmark account of the first emergence of the Ebola virus. A highly infectious, deadly virus from the central African rain forest suddenly appears in the suburbs of Washington, D.C. There is no cure. In a few days, 90 percent of its victims are dead. A secret military SWAT team of soldiers and scientists is mobilized to stop the outbreak of this exotic "hot" virus. The Hot Zone tells this dramatic story, giving a hair-raising account of the appearance of rare and lethal viruses and their "crashes" into the human race.
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0385479565/?tag=2022091-20
1994
(The Cobra Event is set in motion one spring morning in Ne...)
The Cobra Event is set in motion one spring morning in New York City when a seventeen-year-old student wakes up feeling vaguely ill. Hours later she is having violent seizures, blood is pouring out of her nose, and she has begun a hideous process of self-cannibalization. Soon, other gruesome deaths of a similar nature have been discovered, and the Centers for Disease Control sends a forensic pathologist to investigate. What she finds precipitates a federal crisis.
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B000P28WYO/?tag=2022091-20
1998
(In The Demon in the Freezer, Richard Preston takes us int...)
In The Demon in the Freezer, Richard Preston takes us into the heart of Usamriid, the United States Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases at Fort Detrick, Maryland, once the headquarters of the U.S. biological weapons program and now the epicenter of national biodefense. Peter Jahrling, the top scientist at Usamriid, a wry virologist who cut his teeth on Ebola, one of the world’s most lethal emerging viruses, has ORCON security clearance that gives him access to top secret information on bioweapons. His most urgent priority is to develop a drug that will take on the smallpox-and win.
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0345466632/?tag=2022091-20
2002
(In 1969, William Foster, Sr., a thirty-three-year-old arm...)
In 1969, William Foster, Sr., a thirty-three-year-old army reserve soldier, is lost in action in Vietnam. He leaves behind his beloved wife, Sarah Ann; a six-year-old daughter, Lila; and a thirteen-year-old son, Will, Jr. They live in a trailer on the coast of Maine, and parked beside the trailer is their father's beautiful but unreliable lobster boat, the Sarah Ann. Sarah Ann's graceful curves and beautiful wood are a painful daily reminder of Will Sr.'s plans and dreams - dreams now lost with him.
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/074324592X/?tag=2022091-20
2003
(In The Wild Trees, Richard Preston unfolds the spellbindi...)
In The Wild Trees, Richard Preston unfolds the spellbinding story of Steve Sillett, Marie Antoine, and the tiny group of daring botanists and amateur naturalists that found a lost world above California, a world that is dangerous, hauntingly beautiful, and unexplored. The canopy voyagers are young - just college students when they start their quest - and they share a passion for these trees, persevering in spite of sometimes crushing personal obstacles and failings. They take big risks, they ignore common wisdom (such as the notion that there’s nothing left to discover in North America), and they even make love in hammocks stretched between branches three hundred feet in the air.
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0812975596/?tag=2022091-20
2007
(Panic in Level 4 is a grand tour through the eerie and un...)
Panic in Level 4 is a grand tour through the eerie and unforgettable universe of Richard Preston, filled with incredible characters and mysteries that refuse to leave one’s mind. Here are dramatic true stories from this acclaimed and award-winning author, including the phenomenon of “self-cannibals,” who suffer from a rare genetic condition caused by one wrong letter in their DNA that forces them to compulsively chew their own flesh - and why everyone may have a touch of this disease, the search for the unknown host of Ebola virus, an organism hidden somewhere in African rain forests, where the disease finds its way into the human species, causing outbreaks of unparalleled horror, the brilliant Russian brothers - “one mathematician divided between two bodies” - who built a supercomputer in their apartment from mail-order parts in an attempt to find hidden order in the number pi.
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/081297560X/?tag=2022091-20
2008
(In the vein of Jurassic Park, this high-concept thriller ...)
In the vein of Jurassic Park, this high-concept thriller follows a group of graduate students lured to Hawaii to work for a mysterious biotech company - only to find themselves cast out into the rain forest, with nothing but their scientific expertise and wits to protect them. An instant classic, Micro pits nature against technology in vintage Michael Crichton fashion. Completed by Richard Preston, this boundary-pushing thriller melds scientific fact with pulse-pounding fiction to create yet another masterpiece of sophisticated, cutting-edge entertainment.
https://www.amazon.com/Micro-Novel-Michael-Crichton-ebook/dp/B0053JJLLC/?tag=2022091-20
2011
(The 2013–2014 Ebola epidemic was the deadliest ever but t...)
The 2013–2014 Ebola epidemic was the deadliest ever but the outbreaks continue. Now comes a gripping account of the doctors and scientists fighting to protect us, an urgent wake-up call about the future of emerging viruses. This time, Ebola started with a two-year-old child who likely had contact with a wild creature and whose entire family quickly fell ill and died. The ensuing global drama activated health professionals in North America, Europe, and Africa in a desperate race against time to contain the viral wildfire.
https://www.amazon.com/Crisis-Red-Zone-Deadliest-Outbreaks-ebook/dp/B07P8JD666/?tag=2022091-20
2019
Richard Preston was born on August 5, 1954, in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States, and grew up in Wellesley, a suburb of Boston. One of three children he was a shy child and small for his age and had difficulty learning to read.
In fourth grade, Preston discovered books and began reading everything he could get his hands on. Finding an escape in books and the imaginative world they crafted, Preston spent a considerable amount of time at the local library after school, taking a particular interest in the science fiction section. He would learn about great names such as Edwin Hubble and his discoveries, the nature of galaxies and the very universe itself, gaining a great love for all things science related.
He attended Wellesley High School, where he had mediocre grades and a bad disciplinary record and was rejected by every college he applied to. He graduated from high school in 1972. One of the colleges that rejected him was Pomona College in southern California. He called the dean of admissions and asked if the college ever changed their mind, to which the answer was no. Preston started to call the dean once a week. Even though he called collect every time, the dean kept accepting his calls and eventually he was put on the waiting list and was admitted to college mid-year. He graduated with distinction.
From Pomona, he went to Princeton University where he got a Doctor of Philosophy degree in English in 1983, writing his dissertation on nineteenth-century American narrative nonfiction writing.
Richard’s first book came after he completed his thesis in 1983. The book was a work of nonfiction titled First Light and focused upon Astronomy. Richard followed this work with American steel, a book about building a steel mill, quickly continuing to build momentum within the fiction and nonfiction field after this point.
The Hot Zone was published before The Cobra Event but only garnered interest from a wide audience after the success of The Cobra event. The novel revolves around the deadly virus that is Ebola which emerges in the suburbs of Washington, D.C. His 1992 New Yorker article Crisis in the Hot Zone was expanded into this book. It is classified as a non-fiction thriller about the Ebola virus. Preston came to know the virus through such contacts as U.S. Army researchers Drs. C.J. Peters and Nancy Jaax. His fascination began during a visit to Africa where he was an eyewitness to epidemics.
The Hot Zone inspired the movie Outbreak’ which starred Renee Russo and Dustin Hoffman. The Hot Zone, The Cobra Event and The Demon in the Freezer (2002) form a collection of stories about viruses called Dark Biology.
In 2003 he published a children's book, The Boat of Dreams: A Christmas Story, about two children who meet a very odd Santa Claus in a flying lobster boat. Then he got hooked on climbing trees, resulting in Wild Trees (2007). Panic in Level 4: Cannibals, Killer Viruses, and Other Journeys to the Edge of Science, a collection of essays related to his experiences researching his previous books, was published in 2008.
In November 2009, Preston was selected by Harper-Collins and the Michael Crichton estate to complete his unfinished novel Micro after Crichton's death in November 2008. The book was released on November 22, 2011. Approximately a third of Micro was completed by Crichton. In 2016, Preston served as the Bedell Distinguished Visiting Professor at the University of Iowa's Nonfiction Writing Program where he judged the prestigious Iowa Prize in Literary Nonfiction.
(In First Light, Richard Preston demonstrates his gift for...)
1987(In the vein of Jurassic Park, this high-concept thriller ...)
2011(In The Wild Trees, Richard Preston unfolds the spellbindi...)
2007(A chronicle of the efforts of America's ninth largest ste...)
1991(In The Demon in the Freezer, Richard Preston takes us int...)
2002(Panic in Level 4 is a grand tour through the eerie and un...)
2008(The Cobra Event is set in motion one spring morning in Ne...)
1998(The 2013–2014 Ebola epidemic was the deadliest ever but t...)
2019(The bestselling landmark account of the first emergence o...)
1994(In 1969, William Foster, Sr., a thirty-three-year-old arm...)
2003Despite being a humanist Preston’s interests largely lie in science; it is for this reason that all his books tend to focus upon scrutinizing nature and the dark and light facets of its existence, from galaxies to insects and viruses. That being said he places special emphasis upon human characters and the struggles they persevere through.
Richard has described his method as largely revolving around immersing himself in his subjects and their lives, experiencing their worlds as they view them and attempting to bring their unique perspectives to paper.
Quotations:
"Chance favors the prepared mind."
"Nature had seemed to be closing in on us for a kill when she suddenly turned her face away and smiled. It was a Mona Lisa smile, the meaning of which no one could figure out."
"The best way to know what's in the soup is to boil yourself in it."
"During climbs into taller trees, I was occasionally able to look down on the backs of birds, which shine with reflected sunlight as they move through the green depths of the canopy, like schools of fish."
"There may be ten million different species on the earth or a hundred million species. The forest canopy is the earth's secret ocean, and it is inhabited by many living things that don't have names, and are vanishing before they have even been seen by human eyes."
"Global climate change has become entangled with the problem of invasive species. A warmer climate could allow some invaders to spread farther while causing native organisms to go extinct in their traditional habitats and making room for invaders."
"I happen to love science... Scientists are all slightly mad. There is truth in the stereotype of the mad scientist. They are mad with curiosity."
Preston's dream was to be a starship colonist heading for Alpha Centauri.
Richard Preston is married to Michelle Parham Preston. They have two daughters and a son, all of whom are currently involved in writing and publishing.