Empire of Dreams

Andrew M. Gordon is associate professor of English at the University of Florida and director of the Institute for the Psychological Study of the Arts. He is the author of An American Dreamer: A Psychoanalytic Study of the Fiction of Norman Mailer, co-editor (with Peter Rudnytsky) of Psychoanalyses/Feminisms, and co-author (with HernOn Vera) of Screen Saviors: Hollywood Fictions of Whiteness, and has many articles and reviews on contemporary American fiction and film, particularly science-fiction film.

Andrew Gordon has produced an exhaustive investigation of this major part of Spielberg's oeuvre—appreciative but also critical, finding the complexities inside films that superficial critics have dismissed as childish or manipulative. It's very rewarding to mentally rewind and watch them again with Professor Gordon's insights playing along.

• Chapter 1 Introduction: "I dream for a living"Chapter 2 1: Duel (1971): Paranoid StyleChapter 3 2: Jaws (1975): HydrophobiaChapter 4 3: Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977; rev. 1980): Unidentified Flying Object RelationsChapter 5 4: E.T. (1982) as Fairy TaleChapter 6 5: Poltergeist (1982): Divorce American StyleChapter 7 6: Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981): Totem and TabooChapter 8 7: Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom (1984): Bad MedicineChapter 9 8: Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade (1989): Raiders of the Lost FatherChapter 10 9: Always (1989) and the Eternal TriangleChapter 11 10: Short Films: "Kick the Can" (1983) and "The Mission" (1986)Chapter 12 11: Hook (1991): The Peter Pan SyndromeChapter 13 12: Jurassic Park (1993) and The Lost World: Jurassic Park (1997): Jaws on LandChapter 14 13: A.I. (2001): Separation AnxietyChapter 15 14: Minority Report (2002): Oedipus ReduxChapter 16 15: War of the Worlds (2005) and Trauma CultureChapter 17 Conclusion: Moving Toward the Light