Which Exit‪?‬

"Walter Edge is a terribly dangerous guy to sit down with in a back room."

On Boardwalk Empire he is a supporting player in a good suit. In the Bridgegate scandal, "Wally Edge" is the alias a political operative wore while helping jam the George Washington Bridge, which is run by the agency Edge built. Twice in twenty years New Jersey reached for his name, and neither time did anyone know what they were holding.

He was governor of New Jersey twice, a United States senator, and ambassador to France between the wars. He broke the deadlock that built the Holland Tunnel and the Benjamin Franklin Bridge.
 

Then at seventy he came out of retirement to break the most powerful political boss in America, and set in motion the greatest overhaul of New Jersey government in its history.

He got there the way everything got done in New Jersey. By a deal. In 1916 the Republican boss of Atlantic City and the Democratic boss of Jersey City, who agreed on nothing else, agreed on him.

Which Exit? is the first biography of Walter Edge, and an account of how history gets manufactured. It follows the machine that made him across five generations, from a saloon on Atlantic Avenue in 1900 to a ballot struck down in federal court in 2024.