A review by rembrandt1881
DisneyWar by James B. Stewart

4.0

I had long wanted to read or listen to the audio version of this book and when I began the time in listening (23 Hours!) seemed insane. Told in a narrative format the book didn't big down as much as it could have for so much material. For the 20 years that Michael Eisner ran Disney he built the brand up and saved off takeovers multiple times. While like most regimes you can look at the early changes that were made and see the improvement, early success would seem to have gone to his head and as many people know already, wrapped his hand around the power of running the company and only let go when forced.

One of the amazing things that gets documented is just how much material that the author has that could have been avoided had Eisner and the company paid attention to the outside world and not hid in the sand hoping that things would go away or thag they could bully their way over people. There is so much communication that details exactly what was happening from all sides that made this fascinating.

If you have the stomach for lengthy and sometimes dense and dry business history I think you can learn a lot from this book about how to move people in your direction and the dangers of too openly courting power and authority.

Merged review:

I had long wanted to read or listen to the audio version of this book and when I began the time in listening (23 Hours!) seemed insane. Told in a narrative format the book didn't big down as much as it could have for so much material. For the 20 years that Michael Eisner ran Disney he built the brand up and saved off takeovers multiple times. While like most regimes you can look at the early changes that were made and see the improvement, early success would seem to have gone to his head and as many people know already, wrapped his hand around the power of running the company and only let go when forced.

One of the amazing things that gets documented is just how much material that the author has that could have been avoided had Eisner and the company paid attention to the outside world and not hid in the sand hoping that things would go away or thag they could bully their way over people. There is so much communication that details exactly what was happening from all sides that made this fascinating.

If you have the stomach for lengthy and sometimes dense and dry business history I think you can learn a lot from this book about how to move people in your direction and the dangers of too openly courting power and authority.