James B. Stewart - DisneyWar : the battle for the magic kingdom

This book is based primarily on firsthand reporting consisting of hundreds of interviews and a review of many thousands of pages of documents. In part because Michael Eisner and Disney extended a degree of cooperation, and because I had become a familiar presence in and around the company by the time many of the critical events in this story took place, I had remarkable access to people on all sides of the conflict as many of the events were unfolding, including Eisner, Robert Iger, and Roy Disney and Stanley Gold.

With respect to Disney and its executives, I say a degree of cooperation, because their participation, helpful as it was, did not rise to a level that I would describe as cooperation, certainly not as compared to the enthusiastic and exhaustive cooperation shown by many other sources. Disney did give firsthand exposure to many of its businesses and allowed me to assume the role of a character at Walt Disney World. To my knowledge, Eisner didnt discourage anyone inside or outside the company from speaking to me. He introduced me to numerous executives and sometimes, in my presence, urged them to speak candidly. I spent many hours with Eisner, often in interviews in his offices both in New York and Burbank, on the phone, exchanging emails, observing him in meetings and other situations, riding with him in cars, and sharing meals. Most of the time Disneys head of corporate communications, Zenia Mucha, was also present. I have nothing but admiration for the effective, professional, and courteous reception extended me by Mucha and her staff at Disney, especially Paul Roeder and Anne Wolanski. Craig Dizern was an impeccable host at Disney World, and Walt himself would have been proud of Jonathan Frontado, who served as my guide.

Disney was of course free to decide to what degree it would share information with me. By the traditional, secretive standards of Disney (and most corporations, for that matter) it no doubt thought it was being extraordinarily open. But I quickly realized that its willingness to cooperate was limited. My requests to spend time with Eisner at his homes in Aspen and Bel Air, or on the corporate jet, where I had hoped to have extensive and uninterrupted time for interviews, were declined or went unanswered. No such meetings took place. My repeated requests for copies of written communicationsletters, memos, emailsmany of which I knew existed, were denied. Eisner declined to discuss, or was willing to discuss only to a limited degree, many aspects of his career. When he did sometimes provide narrative accounts of events I had already heard described by others, there were major omissions and inaccuracies. Other company executives were often put in difficult positions by my questions, having to choose between speaking openly and saying something for which they feared retaliation. I quickly realized on which side of that divide most of them would fall.

Despite this lack of full-scale cooperation, I had the extraordinary advantage of access to a rich lode of material describing Eisners actions, words, and state of mind throughout his career at Disney, as well as many other executives and board members. Has there ever been a chief executive who put more of his thoughts in writing than Eisner? I know of none. Though Eisner appears to have curtailed the practice in recent months and years, he is a naturalsome might say compulsivewriter, in letters, handwritten notes, and especially in emails. Even then, I might never have had access to these communications had Eisner and Disney not embroiled themselves in prolonged and contentious litigation, first over Jeffrey Katzenbergs bonus and then over the hiring and firing of Michael Ovitz. Many of these written materials were introduced as evidence and read into the record at trial and in depositions.