The personality of Elvis Presley (1935–1977) deserves attention not only and not so much because he was and remains the most popular artist in world pop culture. A representative of the lowest strata of society - the “white trash”, he literally soared to the top of the stellar Olympus thanks to his completely new, unusual music, which at first shocked America and then forced him to worship him. Combining in his work the lyricism of the blues, the melodiousness of gospel, the tenderness and sentimentality of country, he created his own music - frantic, fiery rock and roll, which embodied the entire musical culture of black and white America. The author, a specialist in American culture, with the emotionality of a writer and the objectivity of a historian, tells the story of a superstar, a white blues singer, sensitive to the culture of the black South, a talent whose wings were clipped by the music industry; the story of a son morally crippled by his mother's excessive love, a man cornered by his status as a sex symbol, the greatest Hollywood star of his time, a naive actor pushed around by a rogue impresario obsessed with his own passions. From the absurdity and grandeur of the explosive and tragic fate of a man who could not keep up with his own image, emerges a portrait of America at that turning point when it created its new image.