: Of Playboys, Pigs, and Penthouse Paupers, An American Tale of Sex and Wonder; the political satire Bye, Bye Miss American Pie; several collaborations including Restaurant Man with Joe Bastianich and The Carnivore's Manifesto with Slow Food USA founder Patrick Martins; and most recently, Sympathy for the Drummer: Why Charlie Watts Matters, a history and appreciation of the Rolling Stones drummer Charlie Watts, and the history of blues and rock ’n ’roll drumming.

In the late 1980s Edison began writing a featured column about television and politics, "Shoot the Tube," for marijuana and counterculture magazine High Times.

[4] As editor and publisher, he caused a furor among staffers by putting Black Sabbath singer Ozzy Osbourne on the cover, and then leaking to the New York Post's Page Six gossip column[5] that thousands of dollars of pot had gone missing from the photo shoot.

[8] Following High Times, Edison became the editorial director for upstart Jewish culture magazine Heeb, for whom he went undercover and exposed Jews for Jesus as a Baptist organization.

The final title that was published during his tenure, Lisa Crystal Carver's Reconsidering Yoko Ono, was excerpted extensively in The New York Times Magazine.

He has contributed to many publications and websites, including Spin, The Daily Beast, Huffington Post, and the New York Press, for whom he covered professional wrestling and classical music.

After his performance, celebrity judge and Czech supermodel Paulina Porizkova told HuffPost, “Mike Edison could be reading a tractor manual and I would be interested.”[10] Edison has also written bios, press releases, and liner notes for numerous bands, including The Stooges, the Ramones, the New York Dolls, Was (Not Was), Zappa Plays Zappa, and Robert Gordon and Chris Spedding.

Edison wrote the extensive liner notes for a series of seven deluxe reissues by the Jon Spencer Blues Explosion, including the 2010 compilation Dirty Shirt Rock 'n' Roll: The First Ten Years.

His 2008 memoir is I Have Fun Everywhere I Go: Savage Tales of Pot, Porn, Punk Rock, Pro Wrestling, Talking Apes, Evil Bosses, Dirty Blues, American Heroes, and the Most Notorious Magazines in the World (May 2008, Faber and Faber/Farrar, Straus & Giroux).

The CD, a collaboration with rock musician and producer Jon Spencer, has been called “a revolutionary turn for the spoken word record,” and has been compared to “Lenny Bruce, Jack Kerouac, and Richard Pryor.”[15] “Dean of Rock Critics” Robert Christgau gave the record three stars, giving special praise to  the tracks “Pornography, Part I,” and “Ozzy, High Times, and Me.”[16] Edison performed the book numerous times on the subsequent book tour with his band the Space Liberation Army.

: Of Playboys, Pigs, and Penthouse Paupers, An American Tale of Sex and Wonder was described by journalist and historian Rick Perlstein as "foul-mouthed popular history at its most entertaining."

Largely a history of American men's magazines, beginning in the 1950s with Hugh Hefner and Playboy and winding its way through the 1960s and 1970s following Hefner's less genteel proegeny, Hustler publisher Larry Flynt, Penthouse publisher Bob Guccione, and Screw founder Al Goldstein, the book covers approximately sixty years of American popular culture and free speech as "viewed from the darkside of the newsstand."

Kirkus called it “an enthusiastic romp,” and LA Weekly noted that, "Edison is a fast enough talker to move the reader quickly into what turns out to be a well-crafted history of censorship and sex.

Eventually he finds forgiveness with the help of a therapist, whom he refers to (“with her permission”) as "Dr. Headshrinker", comparing her to Jennifer Melfi on the television series The Sopranos, and a rescued kitten named Jeepster, after the song by Marc Bolan.

Edison also returns to familiar themes featured in his other books, including space travel, rock and roll, and professional wrestling, using the concept of “kayfabe” —wrestling argot for “the portrayal of staged events as real or true” — to discuss his father's obsession with his own polished public image.

Infectious... a remarkable achievement.”[29] Embraced by the drumming community, the biography received praise from Clem Burke of Blondie, and Bun E. Carlos of Cheap Trick who called it, “Required reading for any Stones fan.” Jim Sclavunos (Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, The Cramps, etc.)

Dirty!,[31] in addition to a widely seen performance video, “Hugh Hefner Hates Girls,” featuring musicians Jon Spencer and Dee Pop.

Edison gained attention for the outre energy of the ad, which included the veiled threat that  “not everyone is gonna be happy, especially not if you are the drummer in Aerosmith."

[35][36] Edison was the collaborator with restaurateur and viticulturist Joe Bastianich on his 2012 best-selling memoir Restaurant Man of which author Bret Easton Ellis has said "There is no fussiness and not a single boring sentence.

and East River Delta (produced by Jon Spencer), and several singles, including the traditional gospel number “This Train,” and the pro-wrestling themed “I Like to Hurt People,” featuring Handsome Dick Manitoba of proto -punk band the Dictators.

The current line-up includes Boss Hog keyboard player Mickey Finn and drummer Dee Pop, formerly of the Gun Club, and a founding member of New York No Wave band Bush Tetras.