Spielberg, a Jewish life

A book review by Lisa Schwarzbaum

As writer-for-hire on Steven Spielberg: A Life in Films, the pioneering feminist movie critic Molly Haskell is such a counterintuitive choice of contract employee that she acknowledges the weirdness of the situation upfront, confessing her qualms about taking on the project.

The pairing is the work of imps, apparently, who preside over the Jewish Lives series, billed as “interpretive” biographies, now rolling out steadily from Yale University Press. A publisher’s note explains that the editorial matchmaking is done based on the ability “to elicit lively, deeply informed books that explore the range and depth of Jewish experience from antiquity through