Roosevelt, Reagan biographer Morris to speak at Dole Institute lecture series

Editor's note: A photo of Edmund Morris is available via e-mail from University Relations. Contact kunews@ku.edu.

LAWRENCE -- Pulitzer Prize-winning biographer Edmund Morris will launch the Dole Institute of Politics' Presidential Lecture Series this fall in Lawrence, institute director Richard Norton Smith announced today.

Morris -- who won a Pulitzer Prize for "The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt" and recently published a best-selling sequel, "Theodore Rex" -- will speak on Sunday, Nov. 3, on the University of Kansas campus.

Michael Beschloss, a presidential historian who is working on a trilogy based on Lyndon Johnson's secret White House tapes as well as a new account of Abraham Lincoln's assassination, will follow on Nov. 10. David McCullough, who just earned his second Pulitzer Prize for the phenomenally successful "John Adams," will speak Nov. 17. McCullough received his first Pulitzer Prize in 1993 for his biography of Harry S Truman.

The Presidential Lecture Series will be free and open to the public. Each of the lectures will begin at 8 p.m. in the Lied Center, a stone's throw from the Dole Institute's permanent home, which is under construction.

Morris, a native of Kenya who graduated from Rhodes University in South Africa, immigrated to the United States in 1968. Eleven years later, he won a Pulitzer Prize for the first of three planned books about Theodore Roosevelt. He also wrote the authorized biography of Ronald Reagan, "Dutch: A Memoir of Ronald Reagan."

The Dole Institute, established at KU in 1997 to honor the former Kansas senator and presidential nominee, is designed to foster new thinking on major policy issues and encourage student participation and citizen involvement in public service. The 28,000-square-foot Dole Institute building is scheduled to be dedicated on July 22, 2003, Dole's 80th birthday.