Perfect American

Peter Stephan Jungk explores the dark side of Walt Disney's Technicolor life in The Perfect American, a fictionalized biography of the venerable cartoon magnate. Wilhelm Dantine, a German immigrant and cartoonist fired by Disney for protesting Walt's supposed refusal to open his Anaheim theme park to Nikita Khrushchev in 1959, stalks his aging former boss, trying to pierce his wholesome veneer. Disney emerges as a megalomaniac (he considers himself more famous than Jesus Christ) haunted by mortality and scornful of the world that worships him. Trans. from the German by Michael Hofmann.