The Disney Version: The Life, Times, Art and Commerce of Walt Disney

“The single most illuminating work on America and the movies” (The Kansas City Star): the story of how a shy boy from Chicago crashed Hollywood and created the world’s first multimedia entertainment empire—one that shapes American popular culture to this day.

When Walter Elias Disney moved to Hollywood in 1923, the twenty-one-year-old cartoonist seemed an unlikely businessman—and yet within less than two decades, he’d transformed his small animation studio into one of the most successful an...