Edwin Good is a life-long player of the piano, who majored in music at Westminster College, Pennsylvania. From there, he wandered off into Religious Studies, taking a Ph.D. in Religion at Columbia University, and spending an academic career in Religious Studies, specializing in ancient Near Eastern material, especially the Hebrew Bible, at Stanford University from 1956 to 1991.

In the 1970s, he became interested in the history of the piano in the process of taking an M.A. in music, taught a course on music and technology for a time, and wrote a sucessful book on the matter, Giraffes, Black Dragons, and Other Pianos: a Technological History from Cristofori to the Modern Concert Grand, published by Stanford University Press in 1982.

A second, revised edition appeared in 2001. Retiring from Stanford in 1991, he went to Washington, D.C. where he has participated at the National Museum of America History of the Smithsonian Institution in a long-term project of editing the diary of William Steinway, the financial and commercial genius of the company. The diary, which Steinway kept from 1861 to 1896, will be published on the Internet at some time yet to be determined. While at the Smithsonian, he was a co-curator of a large exhibit, PIANO 300, celebrating the 300th anniversary in 2000 of the piano's invention.

In 2001, Edwin moved to Eugene, Oregon and in 2004 was married to Anita Sullivan.