Richard Preston

Richard Preston grew up in Wellesley, Massachusetts, and then attended Pomona College and Princeton University. He became interested in non-fiction and journalism, and wrote several books and many articles before publishing an article called “Crisis in the Hot Zone” in a 1992 issue of The New Yorker. After deciding to expand the article into a book, he wrote The Hot Zone, which quickly became a bestseller. Since then Preston has continued to focus on scientific issues, and has written books about the eradication of smallpox, the Redwood Forest, and the steel industry. The Hot Zone returned to the bestseller list in 2014 as a result of the devastating Ebola outbreak in West Africa. Preston, too, resumed his focus on Ebola during this time, participating in many interviews about the disease and writing articles about it for The New Yorker.