Hollywood Cartoons: American Animation in Its Golden Age by Michael Barrier (2003-11-06) Paperback

The book gives you the very interesting back story of the US cartoons of the last century. I enjoyed the book. Only one problem, for a book about cartoons, there are very very few photos images or illustrations. You can overcome that by having a tablet handy as you learn the titles of the cartoons and look them up on YouTube or Vimeo.

Superb. The book is all that I imagined it would be. The service was exceptional in that the book arrived by mail early. The product was as advertised and overall I am very happy with it.

Would have been helpful to know before hand that the book wasn't intact. Superb book, superbly written, but missing that all important cohesion you want in a good read.

I bought this book on a whim and regretted it as I walked out of the shop, after all it was £25 and I'd already got the excellent "Of Mice & Magic" by Leonard Maltin. However once I started reading I found that this was a corker of a book. Mr Barrier has researched it very carefully and it is full of stories and vignettes that paint a remarkably colourful picture of life in the 1920s to 1950s when these cartoons were made. It's strongest feature over the Maltin book is that it deals with the story in a roughly chronological way so you get the feel of people moving around the industry in waves and often circles too. The odd thing is that at 600 pages it's too short! I get the feeling that there is a lot more interesting stuff to be told that there just wasn't room for but what is there is an excellent read. This deserves a place on any book shelf that supports good animation books.