On Bee Street in Memphis, a 17-year-old girl was trying to sell her father’s piano for $200. She’d been sitting there for 4 hours in 98° heat, but not a single person had stopped until that man in the black leather jacket walked by. But nobody knew that moment was being recorded by a local…
On an overcast morning in the summer of 1945, as the dust of a shattered Europe drifted through the open windows of the Pottsdam conference hall, Winston Churchill studied the new American president with a mixture of curiosity and deep unease. Harry S. Truman had been in office for only a few weeks. He had…
Edmund Hartley had destroyed careers with his reviews. He was the most powerful music critic in America and he hated Elvis Presley. So when he got invited onto the Steve Allen show in 1956, he came prepared to humiliate the young rockstar on live television. His weapon. Oh, Solomo, an Italian opera song so technically…
September 1944, Eastern France. American forces had surrounded a German garrison dug into a fortress position. Stone walls, artillery, machine guns covering every approach. Inside, 1,500 German troops under the command of a major who had sworn he’d never surrender to the Americans. Patton sent an officer under white flag with a simple message. Surrender…
May 12th, 1960, Frank Sinatra’s Welcome Home special, ABC television. Elvis Presley was performing in front of millions of viewers, sharing the stage with one of his idols. It should have been a triumphant moment. Instead, halfway through his second song, Elvis felt his chest tighten. His hands started shaking. Sweat poured down his face….
December 21st, 1945. The phone call came to Dwight Eisenhower’s office in Washington. George Patton was dead. For 3 years, Eisenhower had walked a tight rope, publicly disciplining his most effective general while privately depending on him to win battles no one else could win. He defended Patton to politicians, apologized for him to allies,…
April 1967, New Bethl Baptist Church, Detroit. Artha Franklin had just given an interview where a reporter asked her about Elvis Presley’s gospel music. Artha, always honest and respectful, had said something that would soon reach Elvis’s ears. Elvis is a wonderful entertainer, and I respect his talent. But real gospel, the gospel that comes…
Berlin, April 22, 1945. The Furer bunker, 50 ft underground. Soviet shells rain on the surface. Adolf Hitler sits across from his remaining generals. The maps show a Germany that exists only on paper. His hands tremble. His face is gray. For 4 years, he commanded the most powerful military machine ever built, conquered most…
January 14th, 1973. One stage, one satellite, and one man about to do the impossible. From Honolulu to London, from Tokyo to [music] Toronto, over 1 and a half billion people watched live, making it the [music] most viewed solo concert in history. For 90 minutes, the entire planet was connected by a single [music]…
April 8th, 1943. 27,000 ft above Kong, France. The oxygen mask couldn’t hide Oberloitant Ralph Hermachin’s smirk as he watched the unggainainely silhouettes climbing laboriously toward his formation through the crystal clearar canopy of his Fauler Wolf 190 A5. The veteran ace of Yagkashvada, 26, studied the American fighters making their combat debut over occupied…
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