Until the first edition of Steven Spielberg: A Biography was published
in 1997, much about Spielberg's personality and the forces that shaped
it had remained enigmatic, in large part because of his tendency to
obscure and mythologize his own past. But in this first full-scale,
in-depth biography of Spielberg, Joseph McBride reveals hidden
dimensions of the filmmaker's personality and shows how deeply personal
even his most commercial work has been.
This new edition adds four chapters to Spielberg's life story,
chronicling his extraordinarily active and creative period from 1997 to
the present, a period in which he has balanced his executive duties as
one of the partners in the film studio DreamWorks SKG with a remarkable
string of films as a director. Spielberg's ambitious recent
work--including Amistad, Saving Private Ryan, A. I. Artifucial
Intelligence, Minority Report, The Terminal and Munich--has
continually expanded his range both stylistically and in terms of
adventurous, often controversial, subject matter.
Steven Spielberg: A Biography brought about a reevaluation of the
great filmmaker's life and work by those who viewed him as merely a
facile entertainer. This new edition guides readers through the mature
artistry of Spielberg's later period in which he manages, against
considerable odds, to run a successful studio while maintaining and
enlarging his high artistic standards as one of America's most
thoughtful, sophisticated, and popular filmmakers.
