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Rating: 
Summary: I thoroughly enjoyed the book
Review: I have to say that I am a Disney fan who read Eisner's book. I really wanted to read another book about him, having read his autobiography. This book was great reading about his personalitiy and strenghts and weaknesses, but it never convinced me that he "lost the keys of the kingdom." Every CEO of a major corporation has their own strengths and weaknesses. This book shows a lot of Eisner's strengths. It also focuses on some weaknesses, such as being a loner and being angry at some of the ambitions of some employees. What the book did not deal with is the wonderful experience we have all been having a Disney since Eisner took the helm. Where else can you go where you know what you will experience? This is a great book to buy and make your own conclusions from. It you are a fan a Disney, I would read it for the insights. Even though the content is not positive toward Disney, you can draw your own conclusions. I have to say where else can you go for great entertainment that is wonderful? And who else can be responsible for this than Michael Eisner?
Rating: 
Summary: Prescient Book
Review: Keys to the Kingdom predicted the current situation at Disney with remarkable accuracy. The insights about Michael Eisner turned out to be right on the mark.
Rating: 
Summary: pretty terrible
Review: Oh Lord, this book is so unbelievably frustrating....more than any book I've ever read. Eisner, his life and his actions are so completely fascinating and Masters somehow manages to take all this great material and make it mind-numbingly boring...what was she thinking? That you could write a "nuanced" portrait of someone by throwing in hot gossip, sound bites, bits of articles from Time and Newsweek, as well as a bunch of stories that don't remotely relate to the main subject but are "dishy"? There was so much I wanted to know as I read this book, so many questions I had and she didn't answer any of them. Masters discusses Eisner's charm vs. his ruthlessness, she brings up provacative examples of his relationship to his family, his friends and his colleagues, and then steamrolls all of them by emphasizing how "aloof" he is and "imperial." Doesn't she know that when sketching a complicated portrait of someone, you can't just throw a bunch of facts around but you have to maintain interest by putting them TOGETHER to form a PERSPECTIVE, a CONTEXT. Much more time should have been spent on Eisner's days at Disney (rather than the completely gratuitous tales of his time at Paramount, and Star Trek, and Nimoy, and Gene Roddenberry, and Don Simpson, and Barry Diller, and...well you get the picture). I liked the parts about his childhood and his relationship to his parents, they should have been given much more space...but the biggest flaw of this book is the lack of info on the Eisner-Katzenberg relationship. Sure, Masters give plenty of space to financial issues about Katzenberg's bonus, but aside from Wall Street enthusiasts, who the hell cares? She COMPLETELY glosses over the roots of the Eisner-Katzenberg bond, and we never get an idea of WHY IN THE WORLD DID THESE TWO PEOPLE REMAIN TOGETHER FOR 19 YEARS IF THEY WERE SUCH ENEMIES? What held them together? How exactly did they meet? She talks about how Katzenberg was won over, like others, by Eisner's self-deprecating charm and his (Eisner's) confidence in him, about Katzenberg's not-so-great childhood and his problems with his own parents (very vague descriptions there as well) and how Katzenberg constantly "sought Eisner's approval". Why? What did Eisner offer him that no one else did? Why did Katzenberg follow Eisner from Paramount to Disney? She spends a whole lot of time talking (in a dry, Variety-kind-of-way) about the break-up, but the real question she (and other writers) have often missed is NOT why this relationship crashed and burned but why it was born in the first place. Why did Eisner need Katzenberg? Why did Katzenberg become so enamoured with animation, with his role at Disney, with a potential role as Eisner's number 2? These people are not carbon cut-outs, they are people. They are fascinating, complex characters and Masters gives them with about as much focus as subjects of an obituary. She seems more interested in how much money Captain EO lost, how much money Eisner allegedly cheated certain people out of, how much money Eisner paid Michael Ovitz, how much money Katzenberg wanted, how pissed Leonard Nimoy was at Paramount, what a disaster Star Trek: The Motion Picture was to produce. I don't know about you, but I didn't pick that book up to learn about this stuff. It's SO DIFFICULT to really learn about these people (Eisner and Katzenberg) despite their famous "relationship" or "feud" extremely little is really written about their interactions together as people...you have to research a ton of articles to even find out anything...this is such an interesting subject but whatever Master's knows that the rest of us don't, she isn't sharing. Her book (like many articles) unfortunately is pervaded with the "Everyone knows this" kind of tone that drives me nuts...well, I'm not a Hollywood producer, or director, or actor. I've never met either of these people, but that's why I'm interested! People buy books on Spielberg because they're interested, why the hypocricy? Masters book is slanted, glib, gossipy, disorganized, unfocused,and worst of all, insulting to the reader.
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