Richard Preston
Richard Preston
Richard Prestonis a New Yorker writer and bestselling author who has written books about infectious disease, bioterrorism, redwoods and other subjects, as well as fiction. Whether journalistic or fictional, his writings are based on extensive background research and interviews...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionNovelist
Date of Birth5 August 1954
CountryUnited States of America
closer north plant stand titans valleys whales
The redwoods you can see in Muir Woods are nothing like the redwood titans that stand in the rainforest valleys of the North Coast, closer to Oregon. These are the dreadnoughts of trees, the blue whales of the plant kingdom.
bringing tigers
Green darners never attack people, but they have been seen bringing down hummingbirds. They are the Bengal tigers of the microworld.
choosing classic cult gotten intended reputation science
'First Light' has gotten a reputation as a kind of cult classic about science. I never really intended it to be read as a science book, but books, like children, have a way of choosing their own friends.
immensely inherently life nature operations profoundly small universe viruses wonder
As life forms, viruses are just inherently interesting. It's the microworld - this universe of life too small for us to see - but it's profoundly complicated, and immensely powerful. Ebola is like a beautiful and frightening predator. There is a wonder in the operations of nature that can't be denied, even when we're the losers.
crowns exhaust irregular tallest
The crown of a supertall redwood has a towering, cloudy, irregular form, and the crowns of the tallest redwoods can sometimes look like the plume of exhaust from a rocket taking off.
math numbers landscape
If equations are trains threading the landscape of numbers, then no train stops at pi.
ebola way easy
To mess around with Ebola is an easy way to die. Better to work with something safer, such as anthrax.
loneliness space world
He liked the loneliness of inner space, the sense of being forgotten by the world.
adjust best frequently hosts interest moves natural selection time
When a parasite moves to a new habitat, it can find new hosts through a process called the trans-species jump. Often, the new host has no resistance; it and the parasite haven't had time to adjust to each other through natural selection (it is frequently not in the best interest of a parasite to kill its host quickly).