Conversations with top animators, designers, and voice actors who worked directly with film pioneer Walt Disney

This book provides a highly original approach to the writings of the twentieth-century German philosopher Walter Benjamin by one of his most distinguished readers. It develops the idea of "e;working with"e; Benjamin, seeking both to read his corpus and to put it to work - to show how a reading of Benjamin can open up issues that may not themselves be immediately at stake in his texts. The defining elements in Benjamin's writings that Andrew Benjamin isolates - history, experience, translation, technical reproducibility and politics - are put to work; that is, their utility is established in engaging the works of others. The question is how utility is understood. As Andrew Benjamin argues, utility involves demonstrating the different ways in which Benjamin is a central thinker within the project of understanding the nature of modernity. This is best achieved by noting connections and points of differentiation between his work and the writings of Adorno and Heidegger. However, the more demanding project is that 'working with' Benjamin necessitates deploying the implicit assumptions within his writings as well as demanding of his formulations more than is provided by their initial presentation. What is at stake is not the application of Benjamin's thought. Rather what counts is its use. Working with Benjamin engages with the themes central to Benjamin's work with deftness, daring and critical insight while at the same time situating those themes within current academic and cultural debates.

The Walt's People series, edited by Didier Ghez, is a collection of the best interviews ever conducted with Disney artists. Contributors to the series include noted Disney experts Robin Allan, Paul F. Anderson, Mike Barrier, Albert Becattini, John Canemaker, John Culhane, Pete Docter, Christopher Finch, J.B. Kaufman, Jim Korkis, Christian Renaut, Linda Rosenkrantz, Dave Smith, and Charles Solomon. Walt's People - Volume 11 features in-depth interviews with Ray Aragon, Frank Armitage, Brad Bird, Carl Bongirno, Roger Broggie, George Bruns, Ed Catmull, Don R. Christensen, Andreas Deja, Jules Engel, Joe Hale, John Hench, Mark Henn, John Hubley, Glen Keane, Ted Kierscey, Ward Kimball, I. Klein, Mike Lah, Eric Larson, Ed Love, Daniel MacManus, Tom Nabbe, Carl Nater, Dale Oliver, Walt Pfeiffer, Jacques Rupp, David Snyder, Iwao Takamoto, Shirley Temple, Frank Thomas, Ruthie Tompson, and Richard Williams. It contains hundreds of new stories about the Studio and its artists and should delight even the most serious historians and enthusiasts. Walt's People is a notable new source of historical treasures and should give new energy to the world of Disney research! This book is neither authorized, sponsored nor endorsed by the Walt Disney Company and its subsidiaries. It is an unofficial and unauthorized book. The mention of names and places associated with the Walt Disney Company and its businesses are not intended to infringe on any existing copyrights or trademarks of the Walt Disney Company, but are used in context for educational purposes. The opinions and statements expressed in these interviews are solely the opinions and perspectives of the authors and the interviewees and do not necessarily reflect the opinions and policy of the Walt Disney Company and its businesses.

This work provides an overview of the Disney organization, in particular the theme parks and their significance for contemporary culture. The author examines topics such as Walt Disney's life and how his biography has been constructed, the Disney Company in the years after his death and various writings about the Disney theme parks. He raises important issues about the parks such as: whether they are harbringers of postmodernism; the significance of consumption at the parks; and the representation of past and future. The discussion of theme parks links with the presentation of Disney's biography and his organization by showing how central economic and business considerations have been in their development and how the significance of these considerations is typically marginalized in order to place an emphasis on fantasy and magic.

BLOOD TRAIL When a shoot-out leaves Pinkerton man Charlie Siringo and his tracker Tom Horn laid up in Las Vegas, they're lucky to be alive—and even luckier to bump into their old friend Clint Adams. Despite their injuries, they take up the trail again, this time with the Gunsmith along for the ride. But the cattle rustler they're chasing down is one nasty character, and if one of the wounded men stumbles, it could land Clint in a grave position.

Buried in the red soil of the Oklahoma prairie is a secret only Charlie McDonagh can fully reveal. Charlie is an ordinary man who is witness to extraordinary events and people. A stone statue of a striking young woman, broken into a hundred pieces is uncovered from the dirt of a remote location-a broken statue representing shattered lives and shattered dreams. The story of the statues is one of love, greed, betrayal, power, and crushed aspirations. The statue symbolizes what was and what could have been. A tale of a great oil empire betrayed, destroying the lives of the family who built it. An intriguing story based on the real-life legacy of the Marland Mansion and the statue still located within its walls.

How to Be Like is a “character biography” series: biographies that also draw out important lessons from the life of their subjects. In this new book—by far the most exhaustive in the series—Pat Williams tackles one of the most influential people in recent history. While many recent biographies of Walt Disney have reveled in the negative, this book takes an honest but positive look at the man behind the myth. For the first time, the book pulls together all the various strands of Disney’s life into one straightforward, easy-to-read tale of imagination, perseverance, and optimism. Far from a preachy or oppressive tome, this book scrapes away the minutiae to capture the true magic of a brilliant maverick. Key Features This is for the millions of Disney fans—those who admire his artistry or his business savvy or the products of his namesake company. The tone and style of the book will capture the imagination of younger readers, especially teens, in the same way as How to Be Like Mike. Support within the Disney world includes the daughter and grandson of Walt Disney; nephew and former vice chairman Roy Disney; and numerous Disney insiders who are already spreading the word.

Social Work with Groups: Mining the Gold examines a wide array of varieties of social group work practice, from corrections through empowerment and international issues. It explores ways to deal with youth violence (following the shootings at Columbine High School), issues of social exclusion, empowerment practice, groups in correctional settings, group work practice with seniors, gender diversity, multicultural groups, teleconferencing groups, and education for social work group practice. Every chapter of this timely and important volume reflects the "gold" to be mined in the use of groups in social work.

The economic recovery of the 1990s brought with it a surge of new jobs, but the prospects for most working Americans improved little. Family income rose only slightly and the period witnessed a significant degradation of the quality of work as well as in what people could expect from their waged employment. In this book, Margaret K. Nelson and Joan Smith take a look inside the households of working-class Americans to consider how they are coping with large-scale structural changes in the economy, specifically how the downgrading of jobs has affected survival strategies, gender dynamics, and political attitudes. Drawing on both randomly distributed telephone surveys and in-depth interviews, Nelson and Smith explore the differences in the survival strategies of two groups of working-class households in a rural county: those in which at least one family member has been able to hold on to good work (a year-round, full-time job that carries benefits) and those in which nobody has been able to secure or retain steady employment. They find that households with good jobs are able to effectively use all of their labor power—they rely on two workers; they engage in on-the-side businesses; and they barter with friends and neighbors. In contrast, those living in families without at least one good job find themselves considerably less capable of deploying a complex, multi-faceted survival strategy. The authors further demonstrate that this difference between the two sets of households is accompanied by differences in the gender division of labor within the household and the manner in which individuals make sense of, and respond to, their employment.

Young readers finally have an opportunity to step back from the gigantic, ubiquitous entity of the Disney Company as it exists today and discover the story of the singular, remarkable man who started it all. His biography is the perfect way to tell the story of an artist with the vision, drive, and passion to share his art with the world, a rare, modern success story that is vital to every collection. This volume motivates and inspires young readers to explore their own artistic voice and vision with captivating photography and focused, age-appropriate language.