Sunday Nights with Walt: Everything I Know I Learned from "The Wonderful World of Disney"

Mom, Apple Pie, and Walt Disney

What were you doing on Sunday night? For many Americans, starting in the 1950s, the answer was: watching Walt Disney's TV show. Richard Rothrock's comprehensive history of that show, in its many forms, will take you back to long-ago Sunday nights spent together with family...and Walt Disney.

Rothrock combines meticulous backstories and episode synopses with insight into how Walt's TV show shaped American culture and how it shaped his own childhood and adolescence, gently exposing him to the wide, wonderful world outside his rural town—a world not just of Disney, but of nature, technology, history, foreign cultures, and even romance.

Organized thematically, Sunday Nights with Walt covers both well-known and lesser-known characters and episodes, from Zorro, "Man in Space", and "Disneyland After Dark", to Bullwhip Griffin, "A Country Coyote Goes Hollywood", and the Whiz Kid.

If you recall your own Sunday nights with Walt, Rothrock's book packs the ultimate nostalgia buzz; and if you're too young to imagine a family sitting together in front of a TV, with no iPhones or Facebook or email to distract them, this is your window into a bygone era, and a new way to appreciate the importance of Disney in our lives.

It's almost time. Dad's got the RCA Victor warmed up. Mom's bringing down the popcorn. And now your host, Walt Disney...