20 Facts About Douglas Preston

Douglas Jerome Preston was born on May 31,1956 and is an American journalist and author.

Douglas Preston has authored a half-dozen nonfiction books on science and exploration and writes occasionally for The New Yorker, Smithsonian, and other magazines.

From 1978 to 1985, Douglas Preston worked for the American Museum of Natural History as a writer, editor, and manager of publications.

Douglas Preston served as managing editor for the journal Curator and was a columnist for Natural History magazine.

In 1986, Douglas Preston moved to New Mexico and began to write full-time.

Since that time, Douglas Preston has undertaken many long horseback journeys retracing historic or prehistoric trails, for which he was inducted into the Long Riders' Guild.

Douglas Preston has participated in expeditions in other parts of the world, including a journey deep into Khmer Rouge-held territory in the Cambodian jungle with a small army of soldiers, to become the first Westerner to visit a lost Angkor temple.

Douglas Preston was the first person in 3,000 years to enter an ancient Egyptian burial chamber in a tomb known as KV5 in the Valley of the Kings.

Douglas 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.

Douglas Preston has been active in the International Thriller Writers organization.

Douglas Preston has written about archaeology and paleontology for The New Yorker magazine and has been published in Smithsonian, Harper's, The Atlantic, Natural History, and National Geographic.

Douglas Preston is the recipient of writing awards in the United States and Europe.

In 2000, Douglas Preston moved to Florence, Italy with his young family and became fascinated with an unsolved local murder mystery involving a serial killer nicknamed the "Monster of Florence".

Douglas Preston has criticized the conduct of Italian prosecutor Giuliano Mignini in the trial of American student Amanda Knox, one of three convicted, and eventually cleared, of the murder of British student Meredith Kercher in Perugia in 2007.

In 2009, Douglas Preston argued on 48 Hours on CBS that the case against Knox was "based on lies, superstition, and crazy conspiracy theories".

In 2010, Douglas Preston participated in the first USO tour sponsored by the International Thriller Writers organization, along with authors David Morrell, Steve Berry, Andy Harp, and James Rollins.

Frustrated with tactics he felt unjustly injured authors who were caught in the middle, Douglas Preston began garnering the support of like-minded authors from a variety of publishers.

In 2015, Douglas 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.

Douglas 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.

Douglas Preston was one of many on the expedition who contracted an aggressive parasitic disease, called mucocutaneous leishmaniasis, in the lost city.