Peter Dreyer

Peter Richard Dreyer (b. November 15, 1939) is the author of "A Beast in View" (André Deutsch), "The Future of Treason" (Ballantine), "A Gardener Touched with Genius: The Life of Luther Burbank" (Coward, McCann & Geoghegan; rev. ed., University of California Press; new, expanded ed., Luther Burbank Home and Gardens, Santa Rosa), and "Martyrs and Fanatics: South Africa and Human Destiny" (Simon & Schuster; Secker & Warburg). He was born and brought up in South Africa, where he was involved in the anti-apartheid struggle, serving on the Cape Provincial Committee of the Liberal Party, founded and led by Alan Paton, and as secretary of the Western Province Press Association, which published the fortnightly "The Citizen." Dreyer left South Africa in 1960 and subsequently launched and edited "Omphalos: A Mediterranean Review" in Athens. In 1972, however, he was expelled from Greece by the military junta then in power there and moved to the United States. During the 1970s, he was book columnist for "San Francisco" magazine. He has lived in Virginia since 1988.

Reviews

"Martyrs and Fanatics" was reviewed in the "New Republic" by Nobel Prize winner Nadine Gordimer. Dreyer's exchange with Stephen Jay Gould in the "New York Times Book Review" on the subject of Luther Burbank can be found at [http://select.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=F60C12F63D5F117A93C3A8178AD85F428785F9&scp=1&sq=Peter+Dreyer&st=p]