Product Details
Simon & Schuster, March 2006
Trade Paperback, 608 pages
ISBN-10: 0743267095
ISBN-13: 9780743267090
Read an Excerpt
Prologue
'When you wish upon a star', 'Whistle While You Work', 'The Happiest Place on Earth' - these are lyrics indelibly linked to Disney, one of the most admired and best-known companies in the world. So when Roy Disney, chairman of Disney animation, abruptly resigned in November 2003 and declared war on chairman and chief executive Michael Eisner, he sent shock waves throughout the world.
DISNEYWAR is the dramatic inside story of what drove this iconic entertainment company to civil war, told by one of America's most acclaimed journalists. Drawing on unprecedented access to both Eisner and Roy Disney, current and former Disney executives and board members, as well as hundreds of pages of never-before-seen letters and memos, James B. Stewart gets to the bottom of mysteries that have enveloped Disney for years. In riveting detail, Stewart also lays bare the creative process that lies at the heart of Disney. Even as the executive suite has been engulfed in turmoil, Disney has worked - and sometimes clashed - with a glittering array of Hollywood players, many of who tell their stories here for the first time.
Bryan Appleyard, SUNDAY TIMES
OBSERVER
GUARDIAN
"The fall of Michael Eisner, with its Shakespearean overtones, is a business history, a character study, and a record of how lives are lived at the peak of American business . . . in every way admirable and finely written."
"Stewart's story speeds ahead as smoothly as a theme park ride, with a narrative more like a psychodrama than a business book . . . a smooth read."
"[Stewart] weaves the creative, corporate, financial and personality streams of the Disney Co.'s fate into one astonishingly complete and gripping real-life drama."