A darkly comic, fictional trip through 1970s Americana with Richard Nixon and Elvis Presley riding shotgun. On December 21st, 1970 a drug-addled Elvis Presley showed up unannounced at the entrance gate of the White House with a handwritten request to meet with President Nixon. Elvis lamented the Beatles as a “real force for anti-American spirit” and assured the commander-in-chief, “I’m on your side.” With aides watching and flashbulbs popping, Nixon presented Elvis with an FBI Special Narcotics Agent badge; an ecstatic Elvis put his arms around the President, pulling him in for a spontaneous embrace. It was a surreal – yet undeniably real – moment in history. But the stranger-than-fiction story doesn't end, or begin, there… Against the backdrop of that historical meeting, Jonathan Lowy weaves a vivid web of stories about the eccentric cast of characters whose lives were forever changed by the encounter. Some of the stories are fact, some are fiction, but all are unforgettable. We meet a colonel, who spends his tormented days at the Pentagon trying to develop the right PR spin on the My Lai massacre; an eager-beaver policy wonk, who cooks up feel-good White House programs to distract the public from the war; and a disabled black veteran, whose act of protest in a Rose Garden ceremony sets off a spectacular chain of events. In the middle of the fray stand Richard Nixon - his integrity and presidency becoming more precarious by the day - and Elvis Presley - desperately searching for what he's lost along the way to stardom. Impossible to put down and peopled with a memorable cast of characters, Elvis and Nixon is a sleek, incisive exploration of America at a crucial tipping point.

Out of the millions of photos contained in the U.S. National Archives, the image of President Richard M. Nixon and Elvis Presley shaking hands in the Oval Office in Washington D.C., on Dec. 21, 1970, is the single most-requested. The meeting between Presley and Nixon may not be significant as political history, nor did it benefit the president. It's certainly interesting as cultural history in the sense that it captures a moment of early 1970s America, as the country was so taken with the changes being wrought by the counterculture. Here was Elvis, who used to be such a hero to young people, having aligned himself with the Nixon White House on the side of the squares. Presley got what he wanted - a special assistant's badge, now in Graceland's archives. It was an important moment in his life. I'm not sure how much humor he would find in that or not.

'America's Uncivil Wars' explores the social & cultural issues that preoccupied America in the years 1954-1974.

Elvis Presley and Richard Nixon are two of the most important and controversial figures of the twentieth century. Although fame came to them in very different ways, they rose from very similar backgrounds of poverty to seek the American Dream. These two remarkable men both had to face falls from grace, but while Nixon rebounded from Watergate to regain a reputation as a distinguished elder statesman, Elvis was destroyed by the pressures of fame, only to have his image restored after his death. Here, for the first time, the remarkable parallels in their lives are examined, balanced on the point of their historic December 21, 1970, meeting. Their similarities and differences as American icons are analyzed, and numerous photographs, including all those taken during their meeting, are included. Together, the stories of these two men form part of the essence of American culture.

On a lazy Sunday in 1954, twelve-year-old Jerry Schilling wandered into a Memphis touch football game, only to discover that his team was quarterbacked by a nineteen-year-old Elvis Presley, the local teenager whose first record, "That’s All Right," had just debuted on Memphis radio. The two became fast friends, even as Elvis turned into the world’s biggest star. In 1964, Elvis invited Jerry to work for him as part of his "Memphis Mafia," and Jerry soon found himself living with Elvis full-time in a Bel Air mansion and, later, in his own room at Graceland. Over the next thirteen years Jerry would work for Elvis in various capacities — from bodyguard to photo double to co-executive producer on a karate film. But more than anything else he was Elvis’s close friend and confidant: Elvis trusted Jerry with protecting his life when he received death threats, he asked Jerry to drive him and Priscilla to the hospital the day Lisa Marie was born and to accompany him during the famous "lost weekend" when he traveled to meet President Nixon at the White House. Me and a Guy Named Elvis looks at Presley from a friend’s perspective, offering readers the man rather than the icon — including insights into the creative frustrations that lead to Elvis’s abuse of prescription medicine and his tragic death. Jerry offers never-before-told stories about life inside Elvis’s inner circle and an emotional recounting of the great times, hard times, and unique times he and Elvis shared. These vivid memories will be priceless to Elvis’s millions of fans, and the compelling story will fascinate an even wider audience.

“People will be arguing over Nixon at the Movies as much as, for more than half a century, the country at large has been arguing about Nixon.”—Greil Marcus Richard Nixon and the film industry arrived in Southern California in the same year, 1913, and they shared a long and complex history. The president screened Patton multiple times before and during the invasion of Cambodia, for example. In this unique blend of political biography, cultural history, and film criticism, Mark Feeney recounts in detail Nixon’s enthusiastic viewing habits during his presidency, and takes a new and often revelatory approach to Nixon’s career and Hollywood’s, seeing aspects of Nixon’s character, and the nation’s, refracted and reimagined in film. Nixon at the Movies is a “virtuosic” examination of a man, a culture, and a country in a time of tumult (Slate). “By Feeney's count, Nixon, an unabashed film buff, watched more than 500 movies during the 67 months of his presidency, all carefully listed in an appendix titled ‘What the President Saw and When He Saw It.’ Nixon concentrated intently on whatever was on the screen; he refused to leave even if the picture was a dud and everyone around him was restless. He was omnivorous, would watch anything, though he did have his preferences…Only rarely did he watch R-rated or foreign films. He liked happy endings. Movies were obviously a means of escape for him, and as the Watergate noose tightened, he spent ever more time in the screening room.”—The New York Times