Andrew R. Heinze (born 19 January 1955) is an American playwright, non-fiction author, and scholar of American history. Growing up in New Jersey in a close-knit Jewish family, he left home at fourteen to attend Blair Academy, graduated from Amherst College in Massachusetts, and moved to California. He did his graduate work at the University of California, Berkeley, training in American history, with an emphasis on the history of race, immigration and the history of American Jews. During his academic career he taught both American and Jewish history at several American universities and was a tenured professor of history at the University of San Francisco, where he was director of the Swig Judaic Studies Program, holding the Mae and Benjamin Swig Chair and creating several new programs inclu