"A. Scott Berg's big, rich, graceful biography of Sam Golden brings the movie book' to a new rarified plateau. . . . . The book proves worthy of what would be, in context, the highest praise of all: It has The Goldwyn Touch. " The Washington Post Book World. In an adventure that would have played well in one of his own films, Schmuel Goldfish left the Warsaw ghetto in 1895. He walked 300 miles to the Oder Coderr, where he paid someone to row him across, smuggling him out the Russian empire into Germany, past border patrols to another long, walk to Hamburg. The gleam in his eye was America. "A far-aways country, a vision of paradise. " Schmuel Goldfisz became Samuel Goldwyn, one of the producers who created the Hollywood film industry. His pictures, notably Stella Dallas, Wuthering Heights, and The Best Years of Our Lives, were famous for "the Goldwyn touch. " And Goldwyn himself was one of the most colorful of the vivid personalities of his time. The Saturday Evening Post called him "the central figure of the great comic legend. " Americans still indulge in "Goldwynisms" when they order somebody to "include me out" or "stop biting the hand of the goose that laid the golden eggs. " Goldwyn's son calls this book "the biography my father would have wanted"-a very special look at Hollywood its leading figures.

A. Scott Berg, the author of the bestseller Kate Remembered, graduated from Princeton University in 1971 . He is the author ofr Max Perkins: Editor of Genius, and Lindbergh, for which he received the National Book Award. A Guggenheim Fellowship, and the Pulitzer Prize respectively.