Book

Elvis's army : Cold War GIs and the atomic battlefield

Linn, Brian McAllister, author

Overview

\"What kind of army wants the king of rock-n-roll? Elvis's Army explores the great military and social experiment that was the Cold War atomic army. Militarily, the US Army transformed for the revolution in warfare initiated by the nuclear weapons. Traumatized by Cold War reductions and Korea, it seized on the vision of a great atomic land war against the Soviet Union. It not only adapted a radically new way of fighting, but fundamental changes in its equipment, concepts, and training. Socially, the 1950s the service underwent even more of a transformation. In large part due to the draft, the Fifties Army became the nation's most racially and economically egalitarian institution, the only place where black and white, college graduates and illiterates, rich and poor, urban and rural had to live, work, and, if necessary, fight together. In return for their service, the army was expected to provide young males not only with military skills, but also education, technical training, entertainment, and moral instruction. This social transformation was nowhere more evident than with Elvis Presley. He entered the service a notorious musical rebel hated by adult society; he emerged two years later a clean-cut young all-American boy in the movie G.I. Blues. Elvis's Army is the first history of the US Army's transformation for the atomic battlefield. But it also reveals the cultural importance of the US Army in Fifties America, from draft calls to ROTC, from basic training to overseas service, from Madison Avenue to Hollywood, and from atomic maneuvers to rock-n-roll.\"-- Provided by publisher.

• Publisher: Harvard University Press
• Subject: Presley, Elvis, 1935-1977 Career in the military. / United States. Army History 20th century. / United States. Army Reorganization History 20th century. / Sociology, Military United States History 20th century. / Draft Social aspects United States. / Cold War.
• ISBN: 9780674737686

Item info:

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Holdings :

Call Number	Copies	Material	Location
UA25.L633 2016	1	BOOK	GENERAL