An enthusiastic portrayal of an iconic performer.
In a spectacular Las Vegas show, Elvis Presley (1935-1977) revived his flagging career.
Entertainment journalist Zoglin (Hope: Entertainer of the Century, 2014, etc.) uses Elvis’ 1969 comeback to recount a history of Las Vegas from 1931, when Nevada became the first state to legalize gambling, to its current iteration as a vacation destination boasting lavish, theme park–like hotels, designer shops, gourmet restaurants, blockbuster performers (Celine Dion, Elton John, and Lady Gaga, to name a few), and high-tech, hugely expensive extravaganzas, such as Cirque du Soleil. Before focusing on Elvis, the author reprises stories about “the boozing, macho Rat Pack” and many other headliners who drew crowds at the city’s glitziest hotel, the Sands. “Sinatra was the king,” Zoglin writes, “Vegas’s undisputed Most Valuable Player,” selling out his shows and attracting wealthy gamblers to the casinos. The 1960s, though, saw a “seismic shift, in music as well as in the rest of the culture”; along with the advent of rock ’n’ roll and the Beatles, tumultuous political events such as Vietnam, anti-war protests, and civil rights activism all affected the Vegas strip. Elvis, too, had gone through “a rough decade…in many ways a disastrous one.” His early trajectory to fame had been interrupted by two years of military service. When he returned in 1960, at the advice of his domineering manager Col. Tom Parker, he gave up live performing, instead appearing in a spate of lackluster movies. By 1969, writes the author, both Elvis and Parker agreed that he needed to return to the concert stage—beginning with Vegas. Drawing on scores of interviews, Zoglin paints a vibrant picture of Elvis’ thrilling, electrical presence: “everyone was dumbstruck,” one woman said. “It was one of the greatest shows I’ve ever seen.” Elvis’ performance, writes the author, “set a new standard for Las Vegas. The star was now his own spectacle.” Sadly, success proved brief: Less than a decade later, the star was dead.
An enthusiastic portrayal of an iconic performer.Pub Date: July 23, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-5011-5119-4
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: April 13, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2019
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
PROFILES
A tantalizing glimpse of a lost world. Although she asks the question in her preface, Pevitt never directly reveals an answer as to why someone at the end of the 20th century would become obsessed with someone dead for 300 years. Readers are forced to answer that question themselves, and they might be glad that Pevitt became so involved in a figure who, until now, has not received sympathetic treatment in English. French historians have for some time now been taking a new look at the duc d`OrlÇans, recognizing that he was much more than the philanderer and intellectual lightweight he had been made out to be. When his uncle the Sun King, Louis XIV, died in 1715, a remarkable era came to an end. While the five-year-old Louis XV became de jure king, it was Philippe who actually ruled as regent. In some ways a Renaissance man (he was a musician and artist as well as a soldier and statesman), Philippe delighted in shocking the more conventional members of the royal family and court. Extraordinary rumors (including the claim that he had slept with his own daughter) circulated through aristocratic circles. This, though, seems to have been a calculated strategy to hide his rather formidable talents. As regent, Pevitt argues, he displayed considerable iamgination and energy. He worked hard to rebuild the country's armed forces, began negotiations with England, France's ancient antagonist, and did what he could to spur on emigration to North America. (His efforts are indicated by the fact that New Orleans was named in his honor). Pevitt is not a professional historian, but this in no way detracts from her work; in fact, readers might find her style refreshing and thankfully free from academic pretensions. It seems that she wrote the book for no other reason than that the subject fascinated her—and what better reason could a reader ask for in an author?
Pub Date: Oct. 1, 1997
ISBN: 0-87113-695-3
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Atlantic Monthly
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 1997
This new biography of one of the eminences of American law is interesting yet unsatisfying, for author Polenberg's (History/Cornell Univ.) attempt to demonstrate how Cardozo the man shaped Cardozo the judge lacks necessary depth. Respected for his erudition, admired for his incisive opinions as a judge on New York State's highest court and on the Supreme Court, and beloved for his gentleness, Benjamin N. Cardozo (18701938) was much celebrated during his own lifetime. The acclaim persists six decades after his death, despite the fact that while several principal Cardozo doctrines endure, many of his most important decisions have been rejected as antiquated and inappropriate. For instance, in 1957 the New York Court of Appeals overturned Cardozo's 1914 and 1925 decisions that hospitals can't be held liable for the errors of surgeons and that universities can't be legally responsible for mistakes made by science professors that result in laboratory accidents. Polenberg appropriately and respectfully attempts to deconstruct the Cardozo legend, arguing that he lacked sufficient emotional experience to inform his judicial decisions. For example, in reviewing a rape case, Cardozo's repressed and naive views on sex prompted him to advance the now totally discredited legal assertion that an ``unchaste'' woman would not likely resist sexual advances. Indeed, Polenberg shows that Cardozo sometimes distorted or ignored salient facts to make his judicial decisions conform to his personal sense of morality. The weakness of the book, however, is that Polenberg defends his positions by discussing a handful of admittedly important decisions in excessive detail, at the expense of a thorough analysis and critique of Cardozo's body of work. Not every Cardozo ruling would bear out Polenberg's thesis. It is well acknowledged in modern legal theory that judges are strongly influenced by their emotions and experiences when molding law; thus, the reader might expect more from Polenberg than simply the proposition that Judge Cardozo's stunted emotions affected his rulings. (20 photos, not seen)
Pub Date: Oct. 15, 1997
ISBN: 0-674-96051-3
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Harvard Univ.
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 1997
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