Back in 2011, when I began to research the book Disney's Grand Tour I realized that I was not just writing a book about Walt and his family's trip but also one about the early expansion of Disney around the world (Europe specifically).

I am now trying to dig much deeper into the matter in order to write as in-depth a story about the international expansion as possible for a future volume of Walt's People.

Which led me (among other places) to Australia and New Zealand. I finally understand the exact dates, the names of the people involved, etc.

And here are two letterheads that I had never seen before and that I have a feeling that you will enjoy :-)

 

 Interesting book to be released in July which I had not spotted yet.

How I managed to miss the release of this book last year is totally beyond me. I can't wait for it to arrive later this week!

Receiving the latest "art of" book from Chronicle Books is always a real joy. The Art of Toy Story 5 is no exception.

I am particularly delighted by the concept art pieces by Carlos Felipe Leon, Maria Lee and Deanna Marsigliese. Pure bliss!

 I can now confirm that this book is an excellent read with several in-depth chapters about Ike's Disney career.

I am currently working on an in-depth essay about the life and work of Disney's first merchandising representative in the Nordics and in Mexico and Central America, Robert Hartman. Hartman spoke at least three languages fluently (including German and Danish) and his correspondence and diaries used to be tricky to decipher.

Tricky, that is, until the advent of AI. Google's Gemini has become a close collaborator over the past few days and I am really blown away by what it can do. 

This is a example of a page in German, written in cursive, that Gemini was able to transcribe and translate in the blink of an eye. 

We are light years away from the very basic OCR tools that we had at our disposal until only recently, not to mention from the old version of Google Translate.

Truly stunning stuff.

I just bought this new book which contains two chapters about Eisenmann's Disney career. I will let you know in a few days what I think about it.