Walt Disney was the first to bundle television programs, feature animation, live action films,

documentaries, theme parks, music, books, comics, character merchandise,

and educational films under one corporate umbrella.

He created the first modern multimedia corporation.

In the year of his death, 240 million people saw a Disney movie.

A hundred million people watched a Disney television show.

80 million people read a Disney book.

50 million people listen to Disney Records, 80 million people brought Disney merchandise,

150 million people read a Disney comic strip and nearly 7 million people visited Disneyland.

Walt Disney had changed the world.

He had created a new art form and then produced several indisputable classics within it.

He had advanced color films and then color television. He had reimagined the amusement park.

He had encouraged and popularized conservation, space exploration,

atomic energy, urban planning, and a deeper historical awareness.

He had built one of the most powerful empires in the entertainment world, one that would long

survive him. Yet all of these accumulated contributions

paled before a larger one. He demonstrated how one could assert one's will on the

world. Walt Disney had been not so much a master of fun, or a reverence, or innocence.

He had been a master of order.

That was an excerpt from the book I'm going to talk to you about today, which is this giant

comprehensive 800 page

biography of Walt Disney. It is called Walt Disney the Triumph of the American Imagination

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