Andrew Scott Berg was born in Norwalk, Connecticut, in 1949 and raised in Los Angeles, where his father worked as a film producer. In high school, he became so interested in the writings of F. Scott Fitzgerald that he decided to study English at Fitzgerald's alma mater, Princeton University. There, his studies about Fitzgerald led him to an obscure yet important figure in modern American literature, Maxwell Perkins, who edited not only Fitzgerald's works but also works by Thomas Wolfe, Ring Lardner, Ernest Hemingway, Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings, and James Jones. Berg's senior thesis on Perkins won him an English department award. After graduation, he set about expanding his thesis into a full-length book. Max Perkins: Editor of Genius, published in 1978, was hailed by critics and won the National Book Award for that year.

In 1989, Berg published his second book, entitled Goldwyn: a Biography, about the legendary Hollywood...