Ted Gottfried

The book is a biography of Steven Spielberg's Life. Since the book is a Biography its message is to simply inform the reader about the life of Steven Spielberg from his childhood as the son of a Jewish family to his success in Hollywood as a director. The book chronicles his life from birth to the present time because Spielberg is still alive and continues to work on creating movies for everyone's enjoyment. the book does a wonderful job of capturing the life of Speilberg, and in my opinion show more is a great book for people who are interested in learning about one of the most successful careers in Hollywood history. One thing that this book does very well is showing the relationship between events that happened in Spielberg's early life and how they influenced the films he has made over the years. One of these connections is the influence of Speilberg' s Jewish heritage influencing the production of the film Shindler's List. The book states that "This film (Schindler's List) put Spielberg in touch with his Jewish heritage he had never really known as a child." This film reconnected Spielberg to a heritage that he knew very little about as a child, but had caused him such pain because of harassment by anti-Semites. The result was that Spielberg put more passion into creating the movie to make exemplify the Jewish people and the hardships they had gone through during life under Nazi German rule. Another wonderful thing about this book is the inclusion of a chronology and a glossary in the back of the book. these are beneficial features to have in a biography to assist readers as they discover new words that they don't know the meaning of or if they need to know when specific major events happen. the chronology outlines Spielberg's life starting at his birth and lists major events in his life such as the first time he used a camera and the first short films he created. The Glossary defines words that readers may not know and is present to help readers comprehend some of the tougher vocabulary presented to the reader. the glossary includes words like Torah, a sacred scroll in the Jewish faith that contains the books of Moses, and anti-Semitic, a prejudice against or hostility toward Jews. The biography is a good book for readers that are interested in film and the works of Steven Spielberg. show less

This is a book about the children of the Holocaust, written so that young people today can understand what the children of the day had to go through. Would make a great supplemental reading book for World History. Pictures both the Jewish children and the German children (Hitler's Youth) as victims. Well written and not so overwhelming. Gives a very good step by step account from the beginning of anti-semitism in 1920 until 1989 and beyond. Talks about how children and grandchildren of show more victims and survivors are still dealing with the horror today, as well as attempts at healing. I would give it 4 stars. show less