Seven years in the making and meticulously researched, here is the definitive portrait of one of the most important figures in American entertainment and cultural history.
From the young Walt Disney breaking free of a heartland childhood to the visionary whose desire for escape honed an innate sense of what people wanted to see on the screen, witness Disney reinvent animation, first with Mickey Mouse and then with his feature films, from a novelty based on movement to an art form that presented an illusion of life.
Gabler reveals a wounded, lonely and often disappointed man who at times retreated into pitiable seclusion in his model train workshop, yet still reshaped the entertainment industry by building a synergistic empire in a way that was unprecedented and later widely imitated.
This is a masterly biography, a revelation of both the work and the man–of both the remarkable accomplishments and the hidden life.

About the Author
Neal Gabler is the author of An Empire of Their Own: How the Jews Invented Hollywood, which won the Los Angeles Times Book Prize for history. His biography Winchell: Gossip, Power and the Culture of Celebrity was named best nonfiction book of the year by Time. He appears regularly on the media review program Fox News Watch, and writes often for The New York Times and the Los Angeles Times. He is currently a senior fellow at the Norman Lear Center for the Study of Entertainment and Society in the Annenberg School for Communications at the University of Southern California. He lives with his wife in Amagansett, New York.


From the Hardcover edition.