Walt Disney by Neal Gabler

Walt Disney by Neal Gabler

The definitive portrait of one of the most important cultural figures in American history: Walt Disney.

Walt Disney was a true visionary whose desire for escape, iron determination and obsessive perfectionism transformed animation from a novelty to an art form, first with Mickey Mouse and then with his feature films-most notably Snow White, Fantasia, and Bambi. In his superb biography, Neal Gabler shows us how, over the course of two decades, Disney revolutionized the entertainment industry. In a way that was unprecedented and later widely imitated, he built a synergistic empire that combined film, television, theme parks, music, book publishing, and merchandise. Walt Disney is a revelation of both the work and the man-of both the remarkable accomplishment and the hidden life.

Winner of the Los Angeles Times Book Prize for Biography

USA Today Biography of the Year

An Empire of Their Own: How the Jews Created Hollywood, Winchell: Gossip, Power, and the Culture of Fame, Life the Movie: How Entertainment Conquered Reality, Walt Disney: The Triumph of the American Imagination, and, most recently, Barbra Streisand: Rethinking Beauty, Femininity, and Power for the Yale Jewish Lives series, are among Neal Gabler's five books. His writings and articles have appeared in a variety of publications, including The Atlantic, Vanity Fair, Esquire, Playboy, Newsweek, and Vogue, and he has received two Los Angeles Times Book Awards, Time magazine's nonfiction book of the year, USA Today's biography of the year, a National Book Critics Circle nomination, a Guggenheim Fellowship, and a Public Policy Scholarship at the University of California, Berkeley. The Starr Center is a place where you may go to learn about He has also served as the National Book Awards' primary nonfiction judge. Gabler is currently a professor at Stonybrook Southampton's MFA program.