A. Scott Berg was born in Connecticut in 1949 and raised in Los Angeles. In 1971 he graduated cum laude from Princeton University, where he majored in English. His senior thesis on Maxwell Perkins--the legendary editor who "discovered" and developed F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway, Thomas Wolfe, Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings, Alan Paton, James Jones, and dozens of other important writers--won the Charles William Kennedy Prize. Berg spent the next seven years expanding that thesis into Max Perkins: Editor of Genius (1979), which became a national bestseller and won the National Book Award.

Shortly after its publication, Mr. Berg was approached by Samuel Goldwyn, Jr., who offered him exclusive and unrestricted access to his father's personal and business papers. With the assistance of a Guggenheim Fellowship, he spent eight and one-half years researching and writing Goldwyn: A Biography (1989). More than just the life story of this fascinating film mogul, Goldwyn chronicles the American motion picture industry from its origins to the present. Billy Wilder called it "the best book about Hollywood I've ever read." It too became a bestseller, both here and abroad, and has been published in Japanese, Spanish, French and Italian editions.

Mr. Berg has lectured extensively across this country and Great Britain. He is a member of the Author's Guild, the Writers' Guild of America, PEN Center USA West, and the Century Association. He lives in Los Angeles.