He is the author of Racial Democracy and the Black Metropolis: Housing Policy in Postwar Chicago and co-author of Renewing Black Intellectual History: Ideological and Material Foundations in Black American Thought. His research interests include African-American politics, black intellectual history, neoliberal urban political economy, African immigration, and community development. At Mount Holyoke he has served as coordinator of the Community-Based Learning (CBL) program where he helped to create the Puerto Rican Studies Faculty-Community Seminar. Preston has served on the boards of the Housing Discrimination Project, National Council of the Labor Party, Holyoke Community Land Trust, and New England Public Radio (NEPR). Preston received his BA in history from Howard University and his PhD from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst.