Lighting up Edison's life

In many ways Thomas Edison is, literally, a household name, known to have lit up the world. But his daughter once remarked that she had not read a satisfying biography of her father. It seems people focused on what he did but few cared what kind of a person he actually was.

A new biography, Edison, with its Chinese version recently published by Beijing-based CITIC Press Group, tries to portray the famous scientist and inventor.

The book was written by late Pulitzer Prize winner Edmund Morris, who spent seven years reading some 5 million pages of documents from the Thomas Edison National Historical Park, in New Jersey, the United States, and other collections from Edison's family members.

Morris adopted a flashback method of narration, so that readers can better appreciate how a nearly deaf newsboy became a world-famous inventor.

Besides the commonly known image of Edison, this book also portrays him as a loving husband, a strict father, a cold boss, and a businessman who was confident in his commercial talent but was often on the verge of bankruptcy.