From the back flap of Rising Sun:

Michael Crichton was born in Chicago, in 1942.  He was educated at Harvard College and the Harvard Medical School, and in 1969 was a postdoctoral fellow at the Salk Institute in La Jolla, California.  His novels include The Andromeda Strain, The Terminal Man, The Great Train Robbery, Eaters of the Dead, Congo, Sphere, and Jurassic Park.  He is the author of four works of nonfiction: Five Patients, Jasper Johns, Electronic Life, and Travels.  Among the films he has directed are Westworld, Coma, and the movie version of his own The Great Train Robbery.  In 1988 he was Visiting Writer at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.