Douglas Preston | |
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| Born | Douglas Jerome Preston (1956-05-20)May 20, 1956 (age 69) Cambridge, Massachusetts, U.S. |
| Occupation | Novelist,journalist |
| Alma mater | Pomona College |
| Genre | Thriller,techno-thriller,adventure,nonfiction |
| Notable works | Agent Pendergast Series,The Monster of Florence,Wyman Ford series, Gideon Crew series |
| Spouse | Christine Preston |
| Relatives | Richard Preston, David Preston |
| Website | |
| www | |
Douglas Jerome Preston (born May 31, 1956) is an American journalist and author. Although he is best known for his thrillers in collaboration withLincoln Child (including theAgent Pendergast series andGideon Crew series), he has also written six solo novels, including theWyman Ford series and a novel entitledJennie, which was made into a movie by Disney. He has authored a half-dozen nonfiction books on science and exploration and writes occasionally forThe New Yorker,Smithsonian, and other magazines.
Preston was born inCambridge, Massachusetts and grew up inWellesley, Massachusetts. A graduate of theCambridge School of Weston inWeston, Massachusetts, andPomona College inClaremont, California, Preston began his writing career at theAmerican Museum of Natural History inNew York.
From 1978 to 1985, Preston worked for theAmerican Museum of Natural History as a writer, editor, and manager of publications. He served as managing editor for the journalCurator and was a columnist forNatural History magazine.[1] In 1985 he published a history of the museum,Dinosaurs In The Attic: An Excursion into the American Museum of Natural History, which chronicled the explorers and expeditions of the museum's early days. The editor of that book at St. Martin's Press was his future writing partner, Lincoln Child.[2] They soon collaborated on a thriller set in the museum titledRelic, published in 1995. It was subsequently madeinto a 1997 motion picture byParamount Pictures starringPenelope Ann Miller,Tom Sizemore, andLinda Hunt.
In 1986, Preston moved toNew Mexico and began to write full-time. Seeking an understanding of the first moment of contact between Europeans and Native Americans in America, he retraced on horsebackFrancisco Vásquez de Coronado's violent and unsuccessful search for the legendarySeven Cities of Gold. That thousand mile journey across the American Southwest resulted in the bookCities of Gold: A Journey Across the American Southwest. Since that time, Preston has undertaken many long horseback journeys retracing historic or prehistoric trails, for which he was inducted into the Long Riders' Guild.[3] He has also participated in expeditions in other parts of the world, including a journey deep intoKhmer Rouge-held territory in theCambodian jungle with a small army of soldiers, to become the first Westerner to visit a lost Angkor temple. He was the first person in 3,000 years to enter an ancient Egyptian burial chamber in a tomb known asKV5 in theValley of the Kings.[4] Preston participated in an expedition that led to the discovery of an ancient city in an unexplored valley in the Mosquitia mountains of Eastern Honduras, which he chronicled in a nonfiction book,The Lost City of the Monkey God: A True Story.[5] On that expedition he and other expedition members contracted a potentially lethal tropical disease known as cutaneousleishmaniasis, for which he received treatment at theNational Institutes of Health.[6] In 1989 and 1990 he taught nonfiction writing atPrinceton University. He has been active in theInternational Thriller Writers organization.[7]
With his frequent collaboratorLincoln Child, he created the character of FBI Special AgentPendergast, who appears in many of their novels, includingRelic,The Cabinet of Curiosities,Brimstone, andWhite Fire. Additional novels by the Preston and Child team includeMount Dragon,Riptide,Thunderhead, andThe Ice Limit. Later, the duo created the Gideon Crew series, which consists ofGideon's Sword,Gideon's Corpse, andThe Lost Island.
For his solo career, Preston's fictional debut wasJennie, a novel about a chimpanzee who is adopted by an American family. His next novel wasThe Codex, a treasure hunt novel with a style that was much closer to the thriller genre of his collaborations with Child.The Codex introduced the characters of Tom Broadbent and Sally Colorado. Tom and Sally return inTyrannosaur Canyon, which also features the debut ofWyman Ford, an ex-CIA agent and (at the time) a monk-in-training. FollowingTyrannosaur Canyon, Ford leaves the monastery where he is training, forms his own private investigation company, and replaces Broadbent as the main protagonist of Preston's solo works. Ford subsequently returns inBlasphemy,Impact, andThe Kraken Project.
In addition to his collaborations with Child and his solo fictional universe, Preston has written several nonfiction books of his own, frequently about the history of theAmerican Southwest. He has written about archaeology and paleontology forThe New Yorker magazine and has also been published inSmithsonian,Harper's,The Atlantic,Natural History, andNational Geographic.[8][9][10][11][12]
In May, 2011, Pomona College conferred on Preston the degree of Doctor of Letters (Honoris Causa).[13] He is the recipient of writing awards in the United States and Europe.[14]
In 2000, Preston moved toFlorence, Italy with his young family and became fascinated with an unsolved local murder mystery involving aserial killer nicknamed the "Monster of Florence". The case and his problems with the Italian authorities are the subject of his 2008 bookThe Monster of Florence, co-authored with Italian journalistMario Spezi. The book spent three months on theNew York Times bestseller list and won a number of journalism awards in Europe and the United States.[citation needed] It is being developed into a movie by20th Century Fox, produced byGeorge Clooney. Clooney will play the role of Preston.[15][16]
Preston has criticized the conduct of Italian prosecutorGiuliano Mignini[17] in the trial of American studentAmanda Knox, one of three convicted, and eventually cleared,[18] of the murder of British studentMeredith Kercher inPerugia in 2007. In 2009, Preston argued on48 Hours onCBS that the case against Knox was "based on lies, superstition, and crazy conspiracy theories".[19] In December 2009, after the verdict had been announced, he described his own interrogation by Mignini onAnderson Cooper 360° onCNN. Preston said of Mignini, "this is a very abusive prosecutor. He makes up theories. He's ... obsessed with satanic sex."[20] Preston publishedTrial By Fury: Internet Savagery and the Amanda Knox Case in 2013 as a Kindle Single eBook.
In 2010, Preston participated in the first USO tour sponsored by the International Thriller Writers organization,[21] along with authorsDavid Morrell,Steve Berry,Andy Harp, andJames Rollins. After visiting with wounded soldiers and giving away books at National Navy Medical Center and Walter Reed Army Medical Center, the group spent over a week inKuwait andIraq, marking "the first time in the USO's 69-year history that authors visited a combat zone."[22] Of the experience, Preston said, "As always, we learn a great deal from all of the amazing and dedicated people we meet."[23]
In 2014, during a disagreement over terms betweenHachette Book Group andAmazon.com, Inc.,[24] Preston initiated an effort which became known as Authors United.[25] During the contract dispute, books by Hachette authors faced significant shipment delays, blocked availability, and reduced discounts on the Amazon website.[26] Frustrated with tactics he felt unjustly injured authors who were caught in the middle, Preston began garnering the support of like-minded authors from a variety of publishers. In the first open letter from Authors United, over 900 signatories urged Amazon to resolve the dispute and end the policy of sanctions, while calling on readers to contact CEOJeff Bezos to express their support of authors.[27][28] Not long after, a second open letter, signed by over 1100 authors, was sent to Amazon's board of directors asking if they personally approved the policy of hindering the sale of certain books.[29]
Describing the motivation behind the campaign, Preston explained: "This is about Amazon's bullying tactics against authors. Every time they run into difficulty negotiating with a publisher, they target authors' books for selective retaliation. The authors who were first were from university presses and small presses... Amazon is going to be negotiating with publishers forever. Are they really going to target authors every time they run into a problem with a publisher?"[30]
In 2015, Preston took part in an expedition into the Mosquitia mountains of Honduras that penetrated one of the last scientifically unexplored areas on the surface of the earth. The expedition, led bySteve Elkins and sponsored by Benenson Productions,[31] the Honduran government, andNational Geographic magazine, explored a previously unknown pre-Columbian city built by a mysterious civilization that had been influenced by the Maya, but was not Maya itself. The city was discovered in an area long rumored to contain a legendary "lost city" known asLa Ciudad Blanca, the White City, or the Lost City of the Monkey God.[32] The extensive archaeological site, in a remote valley ringed by mountains, had been discovered in 2012 in an aerial overflight by a team using the powerful technology oflidar (light detection and ranging), able to map the terrain under dense, triple-canopy jungle.[33]
The 2015 expedition explored and mapped the city's plazas, pyramids, and temples. It also discovered a cache of stone sculptures at the base of the city's central earthen pyramid. When excavated in 2016 and 2017, the cache revealed over 500 sacred objects which appeared to have been ceremonially broken and left as an offering at the time the city was abandoned. Preston wrote about that discovery in his 2017 nonfiction book,The Lost City of the Monkey God: A True Story, which became a No. 1 New York Times bestseller.[34] Preston was one of many on the expedition who contracted an aggressive parasitic disease, called mucocutaneousleishmaniasis, in the lost city.[35]
In 2019, he was elected President of theAuthors Guild.[36] In his capacity as president of the Authors Guild, Preston criticized theInternet Archive'sNational Emergency Library programme, launched in 2020 in response to theCOVID-19 pandemic, which he described as "as though they looted a bookstore and started handing away books to passersby."[37] Preston supported a lawsuit brought by publishers against theInternet Archive over the latter's collection of e-books.[38]
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Besides having been nominated for awards related to work with author Lincoln Child, Douglas Preston has also won or been nominated for awards relating to solo literary work.
| Work | Year & Award | Category | Result | Ref. |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| The Ice Limit (withLincoln Child) | 2003 Evergreen Book Award | Nominated | [48] | |
| Still Life with Crows (withLincoln Child) | 2004Audie Awards | Science Fiction | Nominated | |
| Brimstone (withLincoln Child) | 2005 Audie Awards | Mystery | Nominated | |
| 2005 Audie Awards | Science Fiction | Nominated | ||
| The Monster of Florence: A True Story (withMario Spezi) | 2008 Black Quill Awards | Dark Genre Book of Non-Fiction - Editors' Choice | Won | [49] |
| Impact | 2010 New England Book Festival | Science Fiction | Won | [50] |
| White Fire (withLincoln Child) | 2014 Killer Nashville Awards | Silver Falchion Award (Crime Thriller) | Finalist | [51] |
| 2014International Thriller Writers Awards | Hardcover Novel | Nominated | [52] | |
| Blue Labyrinth (withLincoln Child) | 2016 Audie Awards | Thriller or Suspense | Nominated | |
| Crimson Shore (withLincoln Child) | 2017 Audie Awards | Mystery | Nominated | |
| The Lost City of the Monkey God | 2017Goodreads Choice Awards | Non-Fiction | Nominated | [53] |
| The Scorpion's Tail (withLincoln Child) | 2022 Killer Nashville Awards | Silver Falchion Award - Mystery | Finalist | [54] |
| Extinction | 2024 Goodreads Choice Awards | Science Fiction | Nominated | [55] |
| The Lost Tomb: And Other Real-Life Stories of Bones, Burials, and Murder | 2024 Goodreads Choice Awards | History & Biography | Nominated | [56] |
