|
|
|
Two Alums, Two Brothers, Two Books
Richard Preston ’76 and Douglas Preston ’78 are back in bookstores with nonfiction books that proved surprisingly dangerous to write.
|
 |
A novelist specializing in thrillers rents a Tuscan farmhouse unknowingly near the scene of grisly serial killings. A science writer, seeking to understand what it was like for someone to enter a Level 4 Ebola facility and have her spacesuit fail, entered
the same facility…and had his spacesuit fail. (That wasn’t part of the plan.)
Truth can be stranger than fiction, and both Richard Preston ’76 and Douglas Preston ‘78 have documented those truths in their most recent nonfiction novels, which were recently released, just two weeks apart. The brothers, who both majored in English, have long been authors and novelists, sharing interests (science) and influences (like their Pomona English professors), as well as a career path.
Richard Preston is primarily a science writer, best known for the bestselling The Hot Zone, which examined the Ebola and Marburg viruses and is part of his “Dark Biology” series. His last book,
The Wild Trees, focused on the California redwood canopy and those who explore it—including Richard, who learned how to climb enormous trees to explore them alongside his subjects.
 In his newest book, Panic in Level 4: Cannibals, Killer Viruses, and Other Journeys to the Edge of Science, Richard collected seven of his well-known articles for
The New Yorker. “I rewrote them, I added to them, and then I threaded them together,” says Richard. “There’s also a new introduction in which I describe how I work as a journalist and how I get my information.”
The subjects covered in Panic in Level 4 are wide-ranging, from a terrible genetic disease that causes self-cannibalizing and the search for the unknown host of Ebola virus to the sibling mathematicians who inspired the film
Pi by Daren Aronofsky. But perhaps the most thrilling section of the book is in the introduction.
“I talk about trying to get inside the minds of the people I write about, including Lieutenant Colonel Nancy Jaax, who’s the main figure in
The Hot Zone,” says Richard. “[So] I tell a rather long story about putting on a spacesuit and going into army’s bio safety Level 4 Ebola lab in Maryland where my spacesuit failed. It blew up on me. It was this junky old piece of military gear.
“And Nancy had a similar experience. She had a breach in Level 4. She flooded her spacesuit with blood saturated with the Ebola virus. So in trying to write about her, I wanted to go into Level 4 and see what it really felt like to put on a spacesuit and really come face to face with a hot virus like Ebola. But I got more than I had bargained for.”
For Douglas, it was the Italian police, not a virus, that turned his nonfiction writing experience into an unwelcome adventure. “I moved to Italy with my family and we rented an old farmhouse in the Tuscan hills,” recalls
Douglas. “Then I learned that the olive grove right outside the front door was a scene of one of the most horrific double murders in Italian history. So I had gone to Italy originally to write a murder mystery, but became intrigued with this story and ended up writing a nonfiction murder mystery.”
 Douglas has written a dozen thrillers with his writing partner Lincoln Child, eight of them featuring the recurring character of FBI Special Agent Pendergast. He’s written four solo novels, as well, and four nonfiction books, including his latest,
The Monster of Florence.
After learning of the murders, Douglas teamed up with Mario Spezi, an Italian journalist who had followed the case since the beginning and eventually became Douglas’ co-author. The Italian police contended that the murders, which occurred between 1974 and 1985, were the work of a satanic sect. Douglas and Spezi did not agree.
“Where we got into trouble was when Spezi went on one of Italy’s top-rated television shows and ridiculed the investigation, presented a whole bunch of evidence that [showed] it was completely off-base. The chief inspector in charge of the investigation did not take kindly to being made a fool of on national television. So his reaction was to raid Spezi’s house,” Douglas says.
Police took all of Spezi’s archives, notes and computers. The only reason the book survived the raid was that Spezi stuffed a diskette into his pants. He was thrown into jail for 23 days and treated brutally, according to Douglas, and was only released because of an international uproar.
“They hauled me in for an interrogation,” says Douglas. “They accused me of all kinds of crimes, including being an accessory to murder … for knowing about a murder and not revealing what I knew. And then they pretty much threw me out of Italy.” Douglas had already moved back to the U.S., but was still visiting Italy often. “They basically suggested to me that I’d be indicted for a series of crimes and then if I returned, I’d be arrested.”
The Monster of Florence has so far had great success, landing on
The New York Times and Publisher’s Weekly hardcover nonfiction bestseller lists for all three weeks of its release. Douglas says the brothers don’t have any rivalry when it comes to their books, but jokes about Richard’s huge success with
The Hot Zone, which was No. 1 on The New York Times bestseller list and has sold 2.5 million copies. “I’ve got a lot of catching up to do here, but that’s OK. I’m the younger brother. I’ve got a little bit of time to catch up to him.”
Richard says that growing up, the brothers had no idea about their future careers would both involve writing. “Doug and I have talked about this. We never could have imagined it. And it came as big a shock to us as it did our parents.”
The brothers went to different high schools, but both were interested in studio art and humanities. It was during their time at Pomona when English caught their interest. Richard speaks of Professors Darcy O’Brien, Ed Copeland and Martha Andresen as being particularly influential. After graduating from Pomona, Richard went on to earn his Ph.D. in English from Princeton, while Douglas joined the American Museum of Natural History as an editor and writer. His eight-year career there inspired his first book
Dinosaurs in the Attic, which also led him to meet writing partner Lincoln Child.
Today, Richard and Douglas don’t talk shop until after their books are published. “We’re both a little superstitious,” says Douglas. “It’s only when I’m done that I show them to several people and get their opinion.”
Richard concurs. “We talk about it afterwards. We do a lot of talking shop … about who we know in the publishing world. We talk about reviews, we talk about reviewers. We talk about agents.”
And this summer, they’re also talking about collaborating: “We have talked quite a bit about writing a book together,” Douglas says, “maybe a book about growing up in the deadly boring suburbs of Boston during the Vietnam War.”
--Laura Tiffany
Read More:
"The Man Who Cried Plague" - Pomona College Magazine,
Fall 1999 - A conversation between Richard and Douglas
Preston
"Up a Tree" - Pomona College Magazine, Fall 2007
- Learn how Richard learned to climb redwoods for his book,
The Wild Trees
"Meeting
the Fans" - Pomona College Magazine, Fall 2007 -
Follow Douglas Preston as he goes on a book tour
|
|
|
 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
Quick Links |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Explore Pomona's Web |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Find It |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Search |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
