Edmund Morris is best known for his biographies of United States presidents Theodore Roosevelt and Ronald Reagan. Morris received his early education in Kenya after which he attended Rhodes University in South Africa. He worked as an advertising copywriter in London before emigrating to the United States in 1968.His biography The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt won the Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award in 1980. After spending fourteen years as President Reagan's authorized biographer, he published the national bestseller Dutch: A Memoir of Ronald Reagan in 1999.

Morris's other books include Theodore Rex (2001), the second in the three-volume chronicle of the life of Theodore Roosevelt, Beethoven: The Universal Composer (2005), and the final book in his Theodore Roosevelt trilogy, Colonel Roosevelt (2010).

Morris has also written extensively on travel and the arts for such publications as The New Yorker, the New York Times, and Harper's Magazine.Mr. Morris addressed students at the Academy's Achievement Summit in 1990.