Edmund Morris

historian, 1980 Pulitzer Prize

Presidential biographer Edmund Morris was born and raised in Kenya and went to college in South Africa. After working as an advertising copywriter in London, he immigrated to the United States in 1968. Morris published his first biography, The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt, in 1980. The book won that year's Pulitzer Prize and American Book Award. President Ronald Reagan was so impressed with the effort, that he gave Morris free access to his papers, friends and associates, with the commission to write his authorized biography. After about thirteen years, he published the national bestseller Dutch: A Memoir of Ronald Reagan in 1999. The second in Morris' projected trilogy about Theodore Roosevelt, Theodore Rex, was published in 2001. Morris has also written extensively on travel and the arts for such publications as The New Yorker, The New York Times, and Harpers Magazine.