The Magic Kingdom: Walt Disney and the American Way of Life - Hardcover

Watts, Steven

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0395835879 ISBN 13: 9780395835876

Publisher: Houghton Mifflin, 1998

Synopsis

Examines Walt Disney's private life as husband, father, brother, and friend, and explores the irony between his claim of allegiance to traditional values and his eager participation in the development of modern consumerism

About this title

About the Author:

Steven Watts is a professor of history at the University of Missouri. His first book, The Republic Reborn, recieved the National Historical Society Book prize for best book of 1989. Watts currently lives in Columbia, Missouri.

Review:

...a massive grab bag of a book... The Magic Kingdom is an invaluable mine of material on how the American century became the Disney century, a world from Russia to Chile dominated by a Disney-esque culture overseen by the company Walt created. However, as we ready ourselves for our exit from Walt's century into what looks increasingly like the century of Disney Inc., we still await the biographer who can lead us, critical faculties intact, to an exit sign. Perhaps, though, as in any dystopian story worth its salt, there will be no exit from this theater. -- The Los Angeles Times Sunday Book Review, Tom Engelhardt

Part biography, part cultural history, The Magic Kingdom gives us a vivid portrait of the man behind Mickey Mouse, while at the same time situating his anomalous achievement within a social and aesthetic context. We are left with an appreciation of just why Disney's work resonated so strongly in the popular imagination and how it evolved over six decades.... a terrifically readable and illuminating book. -- The New York Times, Michiko Kakutani

Walt Disney's life was a fascinating journey--would that the book were equally fascinating. Unfortunately, Watts ... has chosen a poor format. He'll sum up in a few pages the progress Disney made over, say, a decade and then spend the next few chapters going over and over the ramifications. In discussing Disney's numerous projects, he'll dutifully, ploddingly report what the critics said, both for and against, only occasionally enlivening the proceedings with his own point of view.... Watts's scholarly research (there are 57 pages of notes) has turned up enough information for several books. Unfortunately, he tells his story in a way Walt wouldn't have let get past a first draft. -- Reason, Steve Kurtz

About this edition

• Publisher: Houghton Mifflin
• Publication date: 1998
• ISBN 10: 0395835879
• ISBN 13: 9780395835876
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 526