“I think a biography is only as
interesting as the lives and times it illuminates.”
– A. Scott Berg
Born on this date in 1949, American biographer
Scott Berg is one of our premier biographers and has done a remarkable job in
“illuminating” the lives of other famous Americans – among them Samuel Goldwyn,
the founder of MGM; aviator Charles Lindbergh; and actress Katherine Hepburn.
The son of longtime film producer Dick Berg,
Scott grew up in Connecticut, graduated from Princeton, and then got into
writing biographies by expanding upon a senior thesis he chose to do on
longtime editor Maxwell Perkins, the editor who handled both F. Scott
Fitzgerald and Ernest Hemingway for the New York-based publisher Scribner’s. Max Perkins: Editor of Genius, his
first full-length effort, not only is an illuminating look at the great editor
but also the winner of a National Book Award.
His second book was Goldwyn: A Biography, and his third Lindbergh,
the acclaimed New York Times bestseller about the Lone Eagle. It won the 1999 Pulitzer Prize for Biography
or Autobiography.
A close friend of Hepburn, his 2003 book Kate
Remembered, is a biography-cum-memoir about the friendship, and while it
has received mixed reviews, I highly recommend it if you are like me and
enjoyed Hepburn’s long (and terrific) acting career.
Berg set a goal at age 22 of writing “a series
of biographies 
about the great 20th Century American cultural figures from different parts of the country.” So far, he’s done 5 – about one every 8-10 years. “I am a compulsive worker,” he said. “But I'm also a compulsive relaxer.”
about the great 20th Century American cultural figures from different parts of the country.” So far, he’s done 5 – about one every 8-10 years. “I am a compulsive worker,” he said. “But I'm also a compulsive relaxer.”
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