Let me share with you some problems with reading non-fiction books: There’s no plot arc, no overarching conflict I’m hoping to see resolved, and the latter chapters are usually lame. As such, I never really have the motivation to finish a book.
This means that I accumulate a ton of books that I “am reading” but which are really sitting in strategic locations around the house. For instance, there’s my bedside book (“Alexander Hamilton”), my living room book (“In Defense of Food”), my longtime-but-now-displaced dinner-table book (“The Better of McSweeney’s”), and the one I ACTUALLY JUST FINISHED: My shoulder-bag book, a Walt Disney biography.
The biography, written by Neil Gabler, wasn’t the best-written biography I’ve read (in fact, I wish I’d been allowed to attack it with a red pen before it went to print), but Walt Disney’s life was fascinating. In fact, I found a lot of surprising corollaries between Disney’s life and Alexander Hamilton’s life, as well as the life of Joseph Smith (another recent biography). Of their three biographies, “Joseph Smith: Rough Stone Rolling” by Richard Bushman, a history professor at Columbia, is by far the best written, but all three are fascinating.
Anyway, all three of those guys seem just preternaturally talented. Not just gifted in any one area, but talented at everything. Hamilton was an illegitimate child from the West Indies who fought with distinction in the revolution (eventually becoming Washington’s right hand man), was instrumental in getting the states to ratify the constitution, founded the treasury dept., coast guard, customs dept., first national bank, and stock exchange, and I believe he was key in setting up the US armed forces. He wrote most of the Federalist Papers along with insane amounts of copy for other newspapers. He was a successful lawyer. And his biography makes it appear that he essentially ran the country as Washington’s right-hand man and head of his cabinet.
Joseph Smith, regardless of whether you think he wrote the Book of Mormon or received it by divine inspiration, at least dictated it (if you’re a believer) and at most wrote the thing (if you’re not) in a matter of months. I’m not sure which would be more incredible. He ended up leading an ever-growing community of believers from New York to Ohio to Missouri to Illinois before the mobs killed him, and he built cities, governments, schools, banks, and temples everywhere he went. He did a translation of the Bible from Hebrew AND German, wrote voluminous journals that became “The History of the Church,” served as mayor of the biggest city in Illinois, founded and ran one of the fastest growing religions, ran for president of the United States, and did all this while dodging mobs that were trying to kill him, and also while struggling to hold down a day job to take care of his family.
Walt Disney never held office; he was encouraged to run for mayor of LA but I think just didn’t want to take the time. He made the first sound cartoon (Steamboat Willie), the first cartoon in color (the one with the two trees that fall in love), the first animated feature (Snow White), and basically invented the modern methods of cartooning. Meaning, he and his team were inventing the technology as they went along, not just making the movies. His was the first major studio to sign a TV deal. He designed and built a theme park with his team of cartoonists, and he had ambitions to build planned, managed Disney cities, as well (that was the original idea for EPCOT) but died before those ideas could come to fruition.
So now, some parallels between the three. All three were ambitious, and had a tendency to make loads of enemies during their lives (Smith and Hamilton were killed by some of theirs). And yet they were also charismatic, in that they were able to attract and build “fanbases” of loyal believers that would stick with them. All three begged for money for a good part of their lives, and none of the three were particularly well-to-do except Disney in his later years. All three were workaholics who loved but tended to neglect their families, and they were all lucky in that they had wives who were independent enough to raise families without them (I’m not being sexist, I’m just saying…).
Lastly, the three of them were inventive and imaginative, able to create and innovate in many different fields. Hamilton reinvented government, Smith reinvented religion, and Disney reinvented entertainment, though none were limited to their field by any means. I suppose I should mention that they were all distinctly, even archetypically, American.
Anyway, just some thoughts on some books I’ve been reading. Didn’t mean for it to turn into a term paper.
