About this Event
Veteran Wall Street Journal reporter and Pittsburgh native Robbie Whelan comes to White Whale to discuss his buzzy non-fic debut, The House of Mouse: Bob Iger and the War of Succession at Disney. Whelan is joined in conversation by John W. Miller, friend of White Whale and author of The Last Manager: How Earl Weaver Tricked, Tormented, and Reinvented Baseball. Join us!
Whelan takes us inside Bob Iger’s reign over the Walt Disney Company, replete with palace intrigue, shareholder revolts, out-of-control egos, and wild boardroom dramas.
The last decade represents the most consequential period in the history of the Walt Disney Company. These were the years when everything changed, when all of the company’s strengths, weaknesses, vulnerabilities, and corporate dysfunction were laid bare for the world to see. And the man at the center of it all was Bob Iger, the transformational CEO who built Disney into the world’s most powerful and popular entertainment empire through a series of bold acquisitions and high-stakes strategic decisions.
But what came next was even more shocking: Iger abruptly left the company he built, allowing it to fall into chaos and disarray. Then, a dramatic palace coup overthrew his successor, paving the way for Iger to return as Disney’s white knight, riding to the rescue in an effort to save the company from disaster.
Riven by corporate intrigue, battered by out-of-control egos and the convulsions of a media and tech industry that has innovated at a breakneck pace, Disney was driven to the brink. In this definitive account, veteran business journalist Robbie Whelan traces Bob Iger’s rise from young network executive to the CEO’s suite, probes the fraught psychology behind his worldview, and goes inside the rooms where he negotiated the four giant mergers—Pixar, Marvel, Lucasfilm, and 21st Century Fox—that transformed Disney into a global juggernaut.
Relying on hundreds of interviews with key figures in Iger’s orbit and thousands of pages of documentary evidence, including sensitive corporate communications and internal memos that have never been reported before, Whelan unspools the tale of how Iger molded Disney so tightly in his image that he became convinced that only he could run the company. Iger’s reluctance to give up control led to a decade-long, Machiavellian power struggle for which Disney executives, employees, and shareholders ultimately paid dearly.
At its heart, The House of Mouse is a deeply human story about the tension between creative human endeavors and the harsh realities of running a media business in the twenty-first century, and how one man struggled—as the monarch of any great kingdom must—to balance the needs of the many constituencies who love and depend on Mickey, Minnie, and the rest of Disney’s stable of beloved stories, characters, experiences, and products.
In The House of Mouse, Whelan provides a front-row seat to one of the greatest cases of corporate blood sport of the young century.
ROBBIE WHELAN grew up in Squirrel Hill, nourished by two Steelers Super Bowl wins and hundreds of Primanti Bros. pastrami sandwiches, and has worked as a business writer and foreign correspondent at The Wall Street Journal since 2010. He has covered everything from Wall Street investment scams to corruption on the New York waterfront to presidential elections and the immigration crisis in Latin America. From 2020 to 2024, he wrote about Hollywood movie studios and the entertainment industry, leading him to write his first book, The House of Mouse: Bob Iger and the War of Succession at Disney, a real-life corporate game of thrones story about the world's most-beloved entertainment brand.
JOHN W. MILLER is a writer, baseball coach, and contributing writer at America Magazine. He has reported from six continents and over forty countries for The Wall Street Journal and has also written for Time, NPR, and The Baltimore Sun. Miller is the codirector of the acclaimed 2020 PBS film Moundsville and the founder of Moundsville.org. He has coached two Brussels teams to Little League World Series tournaments and has scouted for the Baltimore Orioles. He lives in Pittsburgh with his wife and son and can be found on X at @JWMJournalist.
Event venue & nearby stays
White Whale Bookstore, 4754 Liberty Avenue, Pittsburgh, United States
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