Despite praise for Steven Spielberg: A Life in Films – an assignment journalist Molly Haskell accepted for Yale University Press’s Jewish Lives series, this witty, accessible though sometimes glib inquiry disappoints. But not because Haskell’s not Jewish. She was surprised, she said, that she was asked to do the book, and she readily acknowledges being ambivalent about many Spielberg movies, especially his pre-Schindler work. A feminist critic and an intellectual, she always favored complex, ironic, European-style films, susceptible to psychoanalysis. Spielberg’s reputation, however, was made on fantasy-action entertainment, often science fiction adventures that typically featured nerdy, lonely or childlike guy heroes. Think Jaws, ET, A.I,, Indiana Jones . As she worked on the book, however, Haskell says she came to appreciate 71-year- old Spielberg’s “staggering” cinematic accomplishments and commercial success. He changed the notion of the blockbuster and went his own way, not