Vendor
	Mohrbooks Literary Agency Sebastian Ritscher
Original language
English
Categories
Politics & government

DISNEY'S LAND

Richard Snow

The Hard Birth of the World's Most Influential Amusement Park

DISNEY'S LAND tells the story of how Walt Disney founded his Disneyland amusement park, by tracing the full trajectory of Disney's career, in both economic and artistic terms, to Disneyland, which was the culmination - and distillation - of all he had done before he conceived it.

Snow says of the Disneyland park, "the alternate world Walt Disney conjured into being - a place of perfect control that also seems spontaneous, the world we live in but with all the sharp edges sanded away - is his masterpiece. It has affected what we experience far beyond the park itself, but it couldn't have happened at all if its creator hadn't spent much of his life taking animated cartoons from coarse, spastic monochrome frenzies into a supple simulation of a universe inhabited by talking animals and dancing skeletons. These creatures didn't merely cavort, they evolved into a persuasive reflection of the perils, frets, and pleasures of human experience.

"In the beginning, Disney got his audiences to believe in them as thinking, feeling beings; and then he transplanted the crowds he had drawn into movie theaters to an imaginary nation where his audience could live among Mickey Mouse and Snow White in a world still powered by steam and fire for a day or a week or (if the visitor is slightly mad) forever.

"It is my hope to trace the path Disney followed from a pinched [heartland] Missouri boyhood to the unprecedented invention he declared "The Happiest Place on Earth."

Richard Snow, a graduate of Columbia College, worked at American Heritage magazine for nearly four decades and was its editor-in-chief for seventeen years. He is the author of several books, including two novels and a volume of poetry. Snow has served as a consultant for historical motion picturesamong them Gloryand has written for documentaries, including the Burns brothers' Civil War, and Ric Burns's PBS film Coney Island. Most recently, he served as a consultant on Ken Burns's World War II series, The War.

Available products
Book Published 2019-11-19 by Scribner

Comments

Chinese/sc: Orient Publishing Center

Call it what you will: A fantasy, a folly, a country of its own, a city from the Arabian nights, a giant cash register, a monument to Main Street, a saccharine absurdity, a triumph of urban design. Richard Snow calls Disneyland an invention on par with the Kitty Hawk Flyer and - in the most shapely of narratives - not only convinces us of its magic but somehow reproduces that magic on the page. A witty, wild, wondrous tilt-a-whirl of a book.

Richard Snow gives Disney fans everything they could want in a history of the world's favorite theme park, from its nascent phase as a mere faraway look in Walt Disney's eye, to the hysteria of its opening day, with the freshly-poured asphalt on Main Street barely set - and beyond. Snow is a great researcher and a terrific storyteller - and no detail is too small, whether it's the landscaping, the design of the rides, or the way Walt Disney did (or didn't) manage the money. As Snow tells it, Disney's Land is more than mere history; it's a page-turner of a suspense story, and even knowing how it all turns out, you'll find yourself wondering if Walt is really going to get his pie-in-the-sky project ready in time for its opening day. I couldn't put it down.

This is a deeply felt and deeply researched story about the complicated man and his vision to create "the happiest place on earth." Snow brings a historian's eye and a child's delight, not to mention superb writing, to the telling of this fascinating narrative.