J. W. Rinzler has authored seventeen books including two New York Times bestsellers, a London Times best-seller, and a #1 best-selling graphic novel. With more than 600,000 copies in print, his books have been translated into seven languages.Rinzler grew up in Manhattan, New York City, and then in Berkeley, California. He lived in France for almost 10 years, where he began writing. Back in the USA, he worked as executive editor at Lucasfilm for fifteen years, working with George Lucas and his genial collaborators on a series of books about Star Wars and Indiana Jones.During this time, Rinzler directed and wrote an animated short Riddle of the Black Cat, based on an Edgar Allan Poe story, which was accepted into several festivals, including the Montreal World Film Festival.

His most recent work is ALL UP, an epic historical fiction novel on the first Space Age. He has several upcoming books: The Complete Making of Planet of the Apes (2018), The Making of Stanley Kubrick's The Shining (2019), The Art of Rick Baker (2019) and The Making of Alien (2019). Rinzler is married and has two daughters, and one grandson (so far). He lives on the northern California coast.