A few years back, while researching the fifth volume of the They Drew as They Pleased -- The Hidden Art of Disney book series, I stumbled upon the lost autobiography of Disney artist and musician Danny Alguire.

Over the past three years, jazz historian Hal Smith, myself and Lucas Seastrom (who is a Disney historian, a specialist of the Firehouse Five Plus Two and a jazz historian) have been working on getting the book into print. Lucas served as the principal editor on this project and, thanks to BearManor Media, the book has now been released, just in time for the holidays!!!

This book has finally been released in English.

It contains a great article by my friend and fellow Disney historian Ross Care: a discussion of how the Le Sacre score was adapted, rearranged, and slightly cut for Fantasia.

An FYI from Andreas Deja for Disney history enthusiasts in France.
 

I just received this wonderful new book (in Italian) about Disney comic book legend Giorgio Cavazzano. It is marvelously illustrated and is a must-have for all my Italian friends who love Disney comics.

I realize that Made of Pen & Ink: Fleischer Studios The New York Years is not a book about Disney, but I know that many of you will want to know about its recent release. I just ordered it and will find out soon how good it is.

I can't wait for Heritage Auctions' upcoming auction in a few days. 

Two of my favorite oddball items are these two Mickey Mouse drawings attributed to Tom Wood for the unreleased Red Book magazine spread Mickey Mouse on Inflation.

 

I am really looking forward to Pixar's Elemental and I will definitely want to pick up The Art of Elemental when it is released by Chronicle Books.

 YES!!!!!

Amazing Disney auction coming up soon, courtesy of Heritage Auctions.

When I received The Disney Animation Renaissance yesterday, I first read the short biography of the author. I learned that Mary E. Lescher worked as a cameraperson and scene planner for Walt Disney Feature Animation. I also discovered that she passed away back in 2019 and will not be able to see her book released, which I found to be very sad.

Especially because her history of Disney's Floridian studio, based on dozens of first-hand interviews, is a fascinating one and deserves to be kept among the best books about recent Disney history. I can't wait to read it from cover to cover.

This has been a really good year for Disney history.

 

I am not sure if I will like the movie Strange World, but what I can already tell you is that I love the book The Art of Strange World, which contains some stunning artwork by Paul Felix, Mike Gabriel, Craig Elliott and Don Hall, but also by Larry Wu, Tadahiro Uesugi and Scott Watanabe, whose style I adore. 
 

This art book, released for the 30 years of Disneyland Paris is full of amazing concept art (complete with additional info and credits) and is definitely a "must have"!

A few years ago, my good friend Joe Campana and I had the pleasure of locating rare movie footage shot at Disney's Hyperion studio by animator Frenchy de Trémaudan. Along with that outstanding footage (including shots of Walt Disney and his artists studying live penguins while preparing to work on "Peculiar Penguins") we also unearthed biographical notes and a marvelous scrapbook full of caricatures and gag drawings by Frenchy and his many colleagues. 

It took close to 5 years and the efforts of Joe Campana, Steve and Virginia Reeser, Lucas Seastrom, Jenna Benton, Mike Vaughn, Jim Hollifield and J.B. Kaufman, to organize all of this material and present it in book form... a massive 300-pages, full-color book.

It is finally available on Amazon. 

If you have friends who love Disney history and own everything released on the subject, you could not find a better gift for them this holiday season.

I have been looking forward to the released of Robert Neuman's book From Hollywood to Disneyland for a long time and when I got my copy earlier today I was not disappointed.

From the little I have read until now and based on the quantity and the quality of the endnotes, I am already confirmed that this book is a "must have" and a "must read," especially if you are interested in the early days of Disneyland or in the influence of American movies on the Happiest Place on Earth.

Kuddos to Robert Neuman and his publisher McFarland! 

 Sad news: Alice Davis (1929 - 2022)

Leslie Iwerks' new book The Imagineering Story is a masterpiece, which comes as no surprise.

What is astonishing is the fact that this 700+ book is not an art book. This is wonderful and (to me at least until D23 Expo) totally unexpected news. In other words, those 700+ pages are practically pure text. Hurrah!

In addition, Leslie does something that I love: she focuses on the men and women of Imagineering. He book is mostly based on interviews.

This means that, like Leslie's documentary on Disney+, from a historical standpoint, the book becomes stronger and more detailed as it progresses closer to our time period.

I suspect that to understand in detail the full story of Walt Disney Imagineering one will need to read both Leslie Iwerks' massive volume, as well as Tom Morris' upcoming series of 4 monographs about the early days of Imagineering (to be released by the Hyperion Historical Alliance Press).

Between the two of them they are in the process of revolutionizing our understanding of Imagineering history.

 

The second volume of my good friend Christian Renaut's book series The Best of Disney's Animated Features has just been released. Congratulations!

Disney Editions outdid themselves this year. Their Holidays line-up is absolutely spectacular. I just received three new books from them which are all winners in their respective categories. I will review all three here over the next few days.

Let's start with the one that surprised me the most: Poster Art of the Disney Parks -- Second Edition is not just a slightly updated version of the 2012 book. With an additional 100 pages (!!) this is really a brand-new book. More text, more illustrations, more information and way, way more posters, including development artwork for those posters. This is the kind of book I was hoping for in 2012. Better late than never.

In other words: I was blown away by this volume. Definitely a "must-have" and a great gift for the Holidays.

And, in exclusivity, here are a few interior pages from Pierre Lambert's upcoming book about Peter Pan!

 

Notably Disney just released an interview with me about the making of The Origins of Walt Disney's True-Life Adventures. Enjoy!