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: DisneyWar |
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List Price: $11.99Amazon.com's Price: $9.59 You Save: $2.40 (20%)Prices subject to change.
Availability: Usually ships in 24 hours
Binding: Kindle Edition
Dewey Decimal Number: 650
Format: Kindle Book
Label: Simon & Schuster
Manufacturer: Simon & Schuster
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 224
Publication Date: February 24, 2005
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Release Date: February 24, 2005
Sales Rank: 14302
Studio: Simon & Schuster
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Editorial Review:
Product Description:
'''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 Walt Disney Animation and nephew of founder Walt Disney, abruptly resigned in November 2003 and declared war on chairman and chief executive Michael Eisner, he sent shock waves through the entertainment industry, corporate boardrooms, theme parks, and living rooms around the world -- everywhere Disney does business and its products are cherished. DisneyWar is the breathtaking, dramatic inside story of what drove America's best-known entertainment company to civil war, told by one of our most acclaimed writers and reporters. Drawing on unprecedented access to both Eisner and Roy Disney, current and former Disney executives and board members, as well as thousands of pages of never-before-seen letters, memos, transcripts, and other documents, James B. Stewart gets to the bottom of mysteries that have enveloped Disney for years: What really caused the rupture with studio chairman Jeffrey Katzenberg, a man who once regarded Eisner as a father but who became his fiercest rival? How could Eisner have so misjudged Michael Ovitz, a man who was not only ''the most powerful man in Hollywood'' but also his friend, whom he appointed as Disney president and immediately wanted to fire? What caused the break between Eisner and Pixar chairman Steve Jobs, and why did Pixar abruptly abandon its partnership with Disney? Why did Eisner so mistrust Roy Disney that he assigned Disney company executives to spy on him? How did Eisner control the Disney board for so long, and what really happened in the fateful board meeting in September 2004, when Eisner played his last cards? Here, too, is the creative process that lies at the heart of Disney -- from the making of The Lion King to Pirates of the Caribbean. Even as the executive suite has been engulfed in turmoil, Disney has worked -- and sometimes clashed -- with a glittering array of stars, directors, designers, artists, and producers, many of whom tell their stories here for the first time. Stewart describes how Eisner lost his chairmanship and why he felt obliged to resign as CEO, effective 2006. No other book so thoroughly penetrates the secretive world of the corporate boardroom. DisneyWar is an enthralling tale of one of America's most powerful media and entertainment companies, the people who control it, and those trying to overthrow them. DisneyWar is an epic achievement. It tells a story that -- in its sudden twists, vivid, larger-than-life characters, and thrilling climax -- might itself have been the subject of a Disney animated classic -- except that it's all true. '
Amazon.com Review:
James Stewart has done it again. The author of the mega-bestselling Den of Thieves, about the 1980s insider-trading scandals on Wall Street, and Bloodsport, the 1990s tale of the Clintons' Whitewater affair, now gives us another epic story, this one culminating in late 2004. With DisneyWar, Stewart turns his investigative and storytelling lens on Michael Eisner and the corporate intrigue which has overtaken the Walt Disney Company in the last decade. He explains how this once-proud institution, long one of America's most admired and well-known businesses, has stumbled in recent years amid a disastrous swirl of egos, personalities, and bad business decisions.
Like one of the roller coasters at DisneyLand, Stewart's epic book takes readers through a wild up-and-down ride as it describes Eisner's regime as CEO. The tale begins with Eisner's early successes rejuvenating Disney's live-action movie franchise and theme parks, the kickoff of the modern animation era with blockbuster hits like The Lion King and Beauty and the Beast, and the cultivation of a highly talented cadre of lieutenants, which reads like a Who's Who of executive talent now dispersed across the Fortune 500: Stephen Bollenbach (Hilton Hotels), Steve Burke (Comcast), Geraldine Laybourne (Oxygen Media), Richard Nanula (Amgen), Joe Roth (Revolution Studios), and so on. Stewart makes clear that Eisner has had a major eye for strong creative content himself, both as a young executive in his pre-Disney years at ABC and at Paramount Pictures and more recently in building partnerships like Disney's extremely lucrative one with Pixar.
Just as he credits Eisner for various Disney successes, though, Stewart assigns blame for the failures, too. The thoroughly researched 534 pages of DisneyWar make clear that his overall verdict on the CEO is negative. Much of the book describes detailed and specific interactions between Eisner and his rivals. Readers interested in the entertainment industry or in the personalities which drive it will not be disappointed. The blow-by-blow accounts of Eisner's feuds with Dreamworks SKG founder Jeffrey Katzenberg, who was his chief aide for nearly two decades, and Michael Ovitz, the superagent from CAA who had been friends with Eisner for even longer than that, are amazingly detailed. They show Eisner to be creative, funny, and charming when he wants to be--and devious, dishonest, and horribly Machiavellian when he doesn't.
Though dispassionate in his writing, Stewart assembles a withering portrait of Eisner as a grasping, self-centered, manipulative, and ultimately self-destructive executive. He shows how the Disney CEO has consistently undercut his potential successors within the company, in many cases drawing on Eisner's own writings and conversations with board members. He shows how Eisner's erratic attitude towards paying severance to former employees--in some cases being overly stubborn (as with Katzenberg, to whom he had a chance to close out for $90 million, but whom Disney ended up paying $280 million) and in others being shockingly lenient (as with Ovitz, who received a $140 million golden parachute after one relatively ineffective year at the company). He shows the overreach of grandiose projects like Euro Disney, and the missed opportunities like Lord of the Rings, Sopranos, and Survivor, on all of which Disney passed.
In the end, Stewart has returned with DisneyWar to what he does best: drilling into a murky and complex subject, capturing an enormous amount of detail through personal interviews, emails, memos, court records, and other data sources, and then weaving together a rich tapestry of people and events to bring others to the same conclusions he has clearly reached himself. Though some readers might tire of the reams of detail Stewart offers--at certain points, the book reads like a gossip rag, with intricate he-said, she-said accounts of individual meetings--most will enjoy it. Beyond the entertainment value, this book also has serious value to students of corporate governance, as it presents a scathing portrait of Disney's captive board of directors and shows what happens with the lack of proper CEO oversight. --Peter Han
Customer Reviews
Average Rating: 
Rating:  - Well-researched, Well-written Book That May Be Too Detailed for Most
This 4 and 1/2-star book is a wonderfully detailed account of the rise and fall of Michael Eisner within the Disney company. It is very well written but needs some editing--most of the accounts are so detailed that at times you want to say to the author: "Just summarize it for me!" His access to the major players allowed him to have minute inside information that includes physical gestures, specific meals eaten, and phone conversations.
In the end Eisner and Jeffrey Katzenberg look ... Read More
Rating:  - Rambling but fun expose
Rambling but fun expose of Disney's run under the leadership of Michael Eisner, this book ultimately is more a series of anecdotes about Eisner than a serious history of Disney.
But Steward keeps it moving with interesting facts and human-interest accounts from the inside of Disney that movie and park patrons never see. For example, when Eisner took over in 1984, Disney owned only 3 hotels, one at Disney Land and two (Contemporary and Polynesian) at Disney World. They were at the time ... Read More
Rating: - War is a great title
This book is a very eye opening piece. Nothing seems to be hidden or spared. It's written from a factual point of view, and although I have not completely finished it yet (about 3/4 through it) I have been surprised and amazed at the information presented. This book does not take the "let's jump on the pro-Disney bandwagon", nor does it take the stance of a "Disney is so awful" book, instead I feel that this book presents both sides of the tale (pardon the mouse tail pun), and discusses the backstabbing, ... Read More
Rating: - A rich perspective of the inside of Disney
I've read this book a couple of times now; it's a long read (over 500 pages) but a compelling one. I'm interested in the Disney Corporation and how they became what they are today, and have read a couple of bios of Walt along with some books on the Imagineers, and I found Stewart's DISNEY WARS to be a worthy adjunct to those types of books. It takes the reader from the "dark" days just before Michael Eisner and Frank Wells took the reins through the rebirth of animation and of live action films for Disney owned ... Read More
Rating: - Disney Disfunction
I read this book after reading Comic Wars by Dan Raviv which was also a corporate tell all type of book. Disney War was even better and it was really difficult to put down. It was truly amazing and somewhat comforting to know that even men and women we believe to have reached the top of their professions still exhibit the same human flaws of jealousy, distrust, insecurity, pettiness, and vindictiveness that typically are central to our most revered literary classics. It's hard to know who the good guys and bad ... Read More
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