For Elvis Presley fans, July 31, 1969, is enshrined in history: the first date of his career-salvaging comeback at Las Vegas's International Hotel. He hadn't played a live gig in eight years, having devoted much of that time to acting roles in drippy Hollywood movies, and his musical career was foundering. But as Richard Zoglin argues in Elvis in Vegas: How the King Reinvented the Las Vegas Show, the International Hotel gigs weren't just a turning point for Presley: they "established a new template for the Las Vegas show: no longer an intimate, sophisticated, Sinatra-style nightclub act, but a big rock-concert-like spectacle."
To set the scene for Presley's second coming, Zoglin begins Elvis in Vegas with a chapter on how a stopover town became a major entertainment destination (key: quickie divorce and legalized gambling) and proceeds to explore the nation's initial skepticism about rock and roll (Frank Sinatra considered Presley a "sideburned delinquent"). Zoglin, the author of Hope: Entertainer of the Century and Comedy at the Edge: How Stand-Up in the 1970s Changed America, is among the best showbiz chroniclers. While Presley is Elvis in Vegas's bedazzling headliner, the book toasts Sin City's lesser lights, including Liberace and Tom Jones, in mini bios as diverting as a Rat Pack performance. Elvis in Vegas is the story of American industry, but also a canny look at the price of commercial glory. Among Zoglin's well-chosen quotes is this remark by the journalist Dylan Jones: "For many... Vegas Elvis was already Dead Elvis." --Nell Beram, author and freelance writer