Elvis Presley

· Penguin Random House Audio · Narrated by Karen White
Audiobook
5 hr 57 min
Unabridged
Eligible
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About this audiobook

PEN/Hemingway Award-winner Bobbie Ann Mason turns her acumen on one of twentieth-century America's most mysterious icons, The King himself. This new biography eschews sensational speculation to paint a thoughtfully researched but wholly felt portrait of the man-child who metamorphosed into a hero, one of the most popular and least supported characters in American history. In 1955, at age 20, Elvis provoked his first near-riot when he sang at a baseball park in Jacksonville. Inspired by black gospel quartets and mentored by producer Sam Phillips, Elvis blended hillbilly music with rhythm and blues in a synthesis that defined a new direction for popular music. Mason's book gets at the consciousness of the icon and of the cultural climate that made him one.

About the author

Bobbie Ann Mason is the author of The Girl in the Blue Beret, In Country, Shiloh and Other Stories, An Atomic Romance, Nancy Culpepper, and a memoir, Clear Springs. She is the winner of the PEN/Hemingway Award, two Southern Book Awards, and numerous other prizes, including the O. Henry and the Pushcart. She was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award, the American Book Award, the PEN/Faulkner Award, and the Pulitzer Prize. She is former writer-in-residence at the University of Kentucky.

Karen White is the New York Times bestselling author of more than twenty novels, including the Tradd Street series, The Night the Lights Went OutFlight PatternsThe Sound of GlassA Long Time Gone, and The Time Between. She is the coauthor of The Forgotton Room with New York Times bestselling authors Beatriz Williams and Lauren Willig. She grew up in London but now lives with her husband and two children near Atlanta, Georgia.

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