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Article: The Magic Kingdom: Walt Disney and the American Way of Life.
- Article from:
- National Review
- Article date:
- February 23, 1998
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 1998 National Review, Inc. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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The Magic Kingdom: Walt Disney and the American Way of Life, by Steven Watts (Houghton Miffflin, 526 pp., $30)
Steven Watts is rather a Ludwig von Drake of a biographer for Walt Disney. Like Disney's egg-headed duck, Watts is a professor (at the University of Missouri) with a tendency to over-explain the obvious, though he often manages to be interesting and informative along the way. He knows his subject thoroughly, can write about it readably, and has packed lots of new and useful information into this volume. As a self-confessed Disney fan since childhood, Watts shows real sympathy for the man who, he says, became a "symbol of postwar America and its ...