The Ride of a Lifetime

Iger covers his career from ABC Sports through his fifteen years as Disney's chief executive, with the acquisitions of Pixar, Marvel, Lucasfilm and Twenty-First Century Fox as the structure. He writes about the succession contest with Michael Eisner, the state of Disney Animation when he arrived, and the deliberate decision to make acquisition of creative capacity the central strategy rather than attempt internal renewal.

The Pixar chapter is the most detailed and the most useful. Iger describes repairing the relationship with Steve Jobs, whom Eisner had alienated, the decision to let Pixar's leadership run Disney Animation rather than the reverse, and the specific contractual protections he offered to preserve Pixar's culture. The Marvel and Lucasfilm chapters follow similar patterns, including the personal negotiations with Ike Perlmutter and with George Lucas and the handling of Lucas's reaction to the story direction after the sale.

The management content is thinner and more conventional. Iger lists principles including optimism, courage, decisiveness, fairness and curiosity, and he writes about the value of telling people the truth quickly. His account of launching Disney Plus frames it as a decision to accept short-term earnings damage in exchange for direct customer relationships.

The book is a CEO memoir written while he still had reputational interests, so it is favourable to its author. The failures receive little space, including ESPN's decline, the Fox integration costs and the succession problem that led to his return in 2022. It says almost nothing about the operating detail of the parks or the studio. Read it for the acquisition strategy and the handling of acquired creative organisations.