A Mickey Mouse Reader Garry Apgar, Editor. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2014.When Garry Apgar set out to write Mickey Mouse: Emblem of American Spirit, soon to be published by Walt Disney Family Foundation, he found plethora of sources on famous mouse. As he arranged his mass of raw material, he realized its value for scholars, leading to A Mickey Mouse Reader. Apgar describes his book as a compendium of liveliest, most instructive, and influential texts on Mickey Mouse from 1928 to present day. It contains not just musings of scholars or literati, but also less solemn fare, geared toward what French call le grand (xx). The sixty-nine articles derive from diverse publications, such as New York Times (Mickey's newspaper of record from which Apgar takes sixth of book's text), The New Yorker, Time, Literary Digest, Washington Post, Harvard Crimson, Journal of Popular Culture, and Art Digest, and represent some of most insightful authors ever to write about Disney's famous mouse, including Diego Rivera, Terry Rams aye, E.M. Forster, Maurice Sendak, John Culhane, Stephen Jay Gould, John Updike, Marshall Fishwick, John Cane maker, Charles Solomon, M. Thomas Inge, Garry Apgar, and Walt Disney himself (or his publicist, who offers What Mickey Means to Me). This book of essays, although not designed to be read in sitting from cover to cover, could be, for it provides compelling narrative of interwoven careers of Walt Disney and Mickey Mouse over nearly half century, during which film industry traversed from, as Apgar notes, the heyday of silent pictures and advent of talkies into Golden Age of studio system, and its decline (xvii).The book is arranged chronologically in seven sections, each with an introduction highlighting Mickey Mouse's tie to culture of time. Apgar's annotations for virtually every entry assist reader in charting Mickey Mouse through several stages of media technology and social change and in understanding development of his myth. For example, Apgar notes first mentions of Disney's wife Lillian's and, much later, coworker Ub Iwerks' contributions to Mickey Mouse creation story. He also follows ebbs and flows of Mickey Mouse's stature in public perception. In Mickey's early years, writers frequently compared him to Chaplin. In 1931, Time acknowledged Mickey's international prominence, saying, Like Charlie Chaplin, Mickey Mouse is understood all over world because he does not talk (23). The same year, in American Magazine, Harry Carr called him one of greatest 'box office' actors in world-though he is only who doesn't receive salary (25). By 1933, College Art Association reported on tour of Mickey Mouse art that ran in prestigious art houses such as New York City's Kennedy Galleries and Boston's Robert C. …