Thomas Edison ‘Resurrected’ In New Book: Event In West Orange

WEST ORANGE, NJ — Random House will host a book launch reception at Thomas Edison National Historical Park in West Orange to celebrate the publication of “Edison,” the new biography of Thomas Edison by Pulitzer Prize-winning author Edmund Morris.

According to a news release from the park, the event will take place from 2 to 4 p.m. on Saturday, Oct. 26 at the park’s laboratory complex. The event is free and open to the general public.

The visitor center is located at 211 Main Street in West Orange. For more information call 973- 736-0550, ext. 11 or visit the website at www.nps.gov/edis.

Random House editor Andrew Ward will offer brief remarks at the reception. In addition, park staff will announce the details of “One Book, One Town: West Orange Reads Edison,” a community-wide reading experience that aims to encourage all to read and discuss the biography together.

Copies of “Edison” will be available to purchase, and archives in the park will display rarely-seen historic documents accessed by Edmund Morris while he researched the biography.

According to park staff:

“‘Edison’ is the first major biography of Thomas Edison to be published in the last twenty years. Edmund Morris spent several years exploring the vast five million page archive preserved at Thomas Edison NHP. In the process he has not only resurrected Edison as a person, but as a man of staggering variety – Edison the botanist, naval strategist, the iron-ore miner, the chemist and telegrapher, audio producer and publisher.”

Park staff added:

“Edmund Morris (1940-2019) was born and educated in Kenya and went to college in South Africa. He worked as an advertising copywriter in London before immigrating to the United States in 1968. His biography The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt won the Pulitzer Prize and American Book Award in 1980. Theodore Rex followed in 2001 and Colonel Roosevelt in 2010. Morris was President Reagan’s authorized biographer and wrote the national bestseller Dutch: A Memoir of Ronald Reagan in 1999. He is also the author of Beethoven: The Universal Composer (2005) and This Living Hand (2012), a collection of essays.”

Thomas Edison National Historical Park is a National Park Service site dedicated to promoting an international understanding and appreciation of the life and extraordinary achievements of Thomas Alva Edison by preserving, protecting, and interpreting the park’s historic artifact and archive collections at the Laboratory Complex and Glenmont, the Edison family estate.

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