Edmund Morris

From Pulitzer Prize-winning author Morris comes a revelatory new biography ofThomas Alva Edison, the most prolific genius in American history. Thomas Alva Edison's invention of the first practical incandescent lamp 140 years ago so dazzled the world that it cast a shadow over his later achievements. In all, this near-deaf genius patented 1,093 inventions, not including those he left unlicensed for the benefit of medicine.Morris portrays the unknown...

Ludwig van Beethoven (1770-1827) was a genius so universal that his popularity, extraordinary even during his lifetime, has never ceased to grow. It now encircles the globe: Beethoven's most famous works are as beloved in Beijing as they are in Boston. Edmund Morris, the author of three bestselling presidential biographies and a lifelong devotee of Beethoven, brings the great composer to life as a man of astonishing complexity and overpowering intelligence....

A panel of James Atlas (Delmore Schwartz, Saul Bellow), Edmund Morris (Theodore Roosevelt) and Stacy Schiff (Vladimir Nabokov, Antoine de Saint-Exupery) discuss the process of researching and writing another person's story.