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No round-up of red-hot summer camp memoirs would be complete without the rising master of the form, lame duck Disney CEO Michael Eisner, whose visionary Camp will one day be considered the acme of the form. Unfortunately, this literary genius may be doomed to go unappreciated by his contemporaries, as a reviewer at USA Today dumps a bucketful of Kakutani-strength haterade all over Eisner's book:

Part of the problem is that Eisner is not a good writer. At one point, he describes an arduous canoe trip by the current campers. He calls it an "adventure to remember."

For those on the trip, the catchphrase is, "You had to be there." Eisner adds, "You never return from a trip really able to recount and give the true flavor of the experience to someone who was not on the trip." Actually, that's what writers do. Too often in Camp, you had to be there.

Some of the writing has the grace of a corporate mission statement: "Keewaydin is a hiking and canoeing camp, with a dual focus on the wilderness trips campers take each summer and in-camp activities like sports, all guided by a low-key philosophy with an emphasis on self-improvement within a framework of group accomplishment."

Eisner has transcended the need for an "editor," the crutch of the quotidian memoirist. Indeed, the shallow waters of Disneyland's Pirates of the Caribbean ride are glutted with the bones of anyone who dared change a word of his singular literary vision.