Hurray, another “Private Elvis In Germany” is not exactly what I thought after I heard about the release of this book.
Design
The book has a nice layout and print. Since it is bilingual the text is printed column wise, German and English brotherly next to each other, the first in black and the second in green. I had some problems with the green English text in artificial light, but that must be my age (or the quality of my glasses).
Content
As said in the intro, I was not really waiting for yet another book on Elvis’ time in Germany. Since the publisher Buch und Kunstverlag sent a review copy of this book by Peter Heigl, the least I could do was to give it a try.
It turned out to be a pleasant surprise. The book does not only contain the well known Elvis story – even the maneuvers in Grafenwöhr got the attention in other books. It is clear that the author is a professional historian, since there is quite some background information on the place itself, next to a good drawing of the cold war situation that the world was in during Elvis’ service.
I did not find any real spectacular pictures of our man, but there are some nice historical additions which make the book “feels complete”.
Conclusion
Without getting boring Peter Heigl sketches an active part of Elvis’ military career.