Customer Reviews

How to Be Like Walt: Capturing the Disney Magic Every Day of Your Life

5 star:		(39)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Just when I thought I knew everything there was to know about Walt Disney, along comes this brilliant book. How to Be Like Walt shines fresh light on the person and character of Walt Disney, a man I never knew but have loved all my life. More than that, it encourages all of us that we can be like Walt, too - if we study his life, discover what drove him, learn from his failures and examine his interactions with others. There will never be another Walt, but we can all be like Walt if we want to be. This book tells us how. He wasn't perfect - but neither are you or I. Still, as the book says, the world would be a poorer place if it hadn't been for just one Walt Disney. I don't know about you, but I wouldn't mind being remembered for making my world better like he did.

How to Be Like Walt tells his story through the eyes of people who knew him and loved him, people who have admired his accomplishments, and people whose lives have been shaped by the force of his personality. It's the most complete picture of Walt Disney available to date from any book. In the bargain, we get lessons to apply to our own lives. Everything to gain and nothing to lose! Read it today.

As a self-help book, "How to Be Like Walt" is a powerful tool with 17 lessons exemplified by Walt Disney's life. As a biography, the book is one of the finest written about Walt Disney.

Disney was a unique Hollywood success story. The squeaky-clean Disney reputation was built on a lifetime of doing good work. It's not that Disney was without fault or rough edges. But Disney was more often the victim of unscrupulous dealings rather than one who was putting a deal over on someone else. This book explores those aspects of his life, and reveals how these experiences shaped his career and led him to bigger and bigger accomplishments.

Just as each of Disney's successes was based on telling a compelling story, Pat Williams and Jim Denney have told Walt's life story in a unique and interesting way. The narrative is filled with stories and challenges in Walt's life, as related by friends, family, and co-workers.

The stories tell about the man, Walt Disney, more effectively than most biographies which are loaded with impersonal facts.

This book provides a multifaceted look at his personality as well as his behaviors. Different people saw him in various ways; that is all fully explained and reconciled as well as can be expected of a complex, creative genius who is not easily explained.

Disney was a workaholic and a taskmaster, yet he was also compassionate about his creative staff and his family. As you read the story of Walt's life, you will learn how we can adapt our lives to achieve greater creativity, success, and fulfillment.

As an author who has read and written about Disney, I recommend this book as one of the best Disney resources available.

Buy this book and read it several times; with the extensive details of the many Disney stories, you will find each reading reveals new insights about Disney's approach to success.

-- Rich Hamilton

I've enjoyed Pat Williams' spoken pearls of wisdom for years, mostly in quotes as GM of the Orlando Magic NBA team. I've also known that he's a Christian and that he and his wife have adopted about 15 children over the years. But this is the first book of his I've read and I was extremely impressed.

Pat obviously admires Walt Disney deeply and figures he has many qualities worth pursuing. Pat not only brings those qualities into sharp focus so that we can apply them to our own lives, he also looks at Walt's shortcomings. No punches are pulled: Virtually every criticism people have leveled at Walt Disney is examined honestly, but a great man is still found when all is said and done.

Even if this wasn't a "self-help" book, it would stand alone as a dynamite biography. Questions about Walt Disney's life that I've never seen anyone even deal with in print before were examined here in depth. Pat interviewed about 250 people and spent years probing into Walt Disney's life. The result is absolutely the best book on the man I have ever read.

I bought this book on a whim expecting just a pleasant biography but Pat Williams definitely took a lesson from Walt and "plussed" the reader's experience. I realize that everyone is different but this was the right book for me at the right time in my life. The author breaks down the characteristics of Walt Disney and paves a solid pathway between "Dream" and "Reality". Walt Disney was a rare and unique individual and this study of his life is like a layman's MBA degree. This book has impacted my life.

This book was amazing. His life is an inspiration on making dreams come true and the people who worked for him really loved and respected him. This book is for anyone, the business person, the artist, or just the fan.

The other reviews highlight some of the excellent reason to treasure this book. I'll just add that I was a really big Walt Disney fan before reading this but learned many new things about him, including details of how Walt handled his last few months.

The chapters on Walt's last months were so touching and emotional this book brought me to tears. Even if you never use the lessons contained (which I think are worth lots of consideration, of course), this book is a very entertaining and touching read.

Highly recommended!

Alright, I confess. I wanted to be a jerk. I wanted to be the first person to give this book less than five stars, but I just can't do it. Sure, I could complain. I could say that the material in the second to last chapter should have spread throughout the book so there would be one summary chapter instead of two. Or I could focus on the lack of explanation as to WHY Walt chose to do some of the films he did. Because it sometimes pains me that I have to assume Walt's idea to animate Pinoccho came from reading it as a kid and liking it, without really knowing for sure.

But I can't complain too much, since I realize that this ain't some half-hearted work here. It is a well-researched collection of hundreds of valuable stories. Each story tells us what Walt was like, the kind of things he did, and the kind of things he wanted to do. I was particularly fascinated with his vision of the futuristic city of EPCOT, where pedestrian and car would never touch the same ground, and a giant dome would keep the city's climate forever under control.

Walt's obsessive dream of constructing a new kind of city is just one of many little tidbits of information the book has for anyone not already intimately familiar with his life. I mean, I had no clue that Disney created a popular cartoon BEFORE Mickey Mouse. And I had no idea his company was so often under the strain of severe financial woe. Heck, this book even told me the name of the 19 year old guy who invented electronic TV.

As much as I would have liked to have read about the origin of that hilarious Donald Duck, I wasn't disappointed at all when the book instead brought up the time Walt turned a hat his wife hated into a flower pot and gave it to her for her birthday. Nor was I disappointed when I read about the earthquake that almost ruined the final scene of Fantasia.

There's so much wonderful history to learn in this book, and so much leadership to be inspire you, that you can't help but love most everything in its pages. Williams and Denney really did a terrific job, especially when you consider my pre-conceived negative bias due to a previous bad experience with a co-authored book The Rock Says.... "How To Be Like Walt" wasn't written to make a quick buck by shoving out something with Disney in the title. It really was meant to show the amazing things Walt did, and how great of a guy he was. (Imagine going to get an ice cream at Disneyland and SURPRISE! Walt Disney himself is behind the counter giving you a huge freaking scoop. It's happened before, believe it or not.)

You know what? I think I would like to be more like Walt. If I CAN'T give a well-written book about him anything less than five stars, perhaps becoming more like Walt is something I CAN do.

This is one of the best investments of time and money that I've made all year. How To Be Like Walt is a superb biography of a beloved American hero, but Pat Williams takes the biography one step further by adding a section to each chapter on how we can apply Walt Disney's experiences to our own lives. Although written with the permission of the Disney family, Walt Disney's character is fully examined, faults and all.

Having grown up watching Disney movies, cartoons and television shows it was wonderful to be able to take a look at Walt's life through the people who knew him best. From bankruptcy and betrayal to triumph and the tragedy of his death, this book covers it all. I simply couldn't put it down. This book has the potential to change your outlook on life as few books can.

If ever there was a book that should be read by all, it's this one. This book saved my life, literally. At the time I read it, I had just come out of a very bad situation and thought everything was over for me. My dreams seemed as far away as ever. Then I was looking through the last few pages of a Disney Magazine(one of the last issues published) and saw this book advertised. Being a Disney fanatic, I collect everything Disney, so of course I had to have this book. From the moment I started reading it, I couldn't stop. I'd read a lot of book about my hero(Uncle Walt) over the years but never one like this. Not only did it tell me the incredible story of his life but it gave me lessons based on what had been discussed in the chapter that I could apply to my life. I especially benefitted from the chapter dealing with living out your dreams and becoming the person you were born to be. The lessons were so personal, it was like having a conversation with Uncle Walt himself in some instances. This book allowed me to rededicate myself to my dreams and realize I had so much potential to do great things. I can honestly say my life has changed for the better and I owe all to Uncle Walt and this great book. So to all who haven't read it, READ IT!!! You won't be sorry.

I liked the book a lot. The first few chapters were some of the most inspiring that I have ever read. There was so much adversity that Walt overcame in his life to become the man that he was by constantly being told what he wanted couldn't be done and then doing it. His life proves that anyone's dreams can come true with some hard work and perseverance. Having the kind of faith that says if you can dream it then it can become reality is very powerful. I highly recomend this book to anyone who has dreams that others say are not possible.