By Jim Curtin (1998)
Review:
It's not an easy book to review as I must remain objective about it while that type of book didn't do much for me. This a book directed to certain fans, mostly the ones who like to read all sort of stories about Elvis, in that sense it's very well done as you have a collection of some 500 hundred short stories and anecdotes related to Elvis.
Most stories seem to be accurate and some are really interesting, however some could be true but certainly not accurate, an example of that would be the story about a unflattering remark made by a woman backstage on the stage attire he was wearing that night, the story took place in December 1976 according to the book and the woman said something to Elvis about his "Prehistoric Bird" jumpsuit. Well, I think the story itself is possibly correct but then we would probably deal with December 1975 instead. This is no big deal I hear you say, indeed it's not but still I think it's more interesting to read when you don't have all the time some " doubts " in the back of your head.
Having said the above folks, I must add that it shouldn't prevent to buy and read this if you like these type of stories, just keep in mind though that some errors could be present. I know it's not so easy to write a book without any mistakes, and especially since we are dealings with anecdotes from the very beginning of Elvis' career to the very end, in that sense no books are really mistakes free.
My biggest disappointment is related to the photographic contents, indeed Mr. Curtin produced several excellent photo books in the past, books such as " Unseen Elvis " ( my favourite Jim Curtin's work ), " Elvis And The Stars " among others, therefore I was expecting some very nice rare photos in that book, and that wasn't the case at all. Several has been seen a whole lot in different other books or magazines, some aren't simply good quality photographs and finally, all these pictures are black'n'white, quite frankly I was expecting much better photo wise.
I read somewhere that Mr. Curtin was planning " Unknown Stories -vol.2 ", if so then I would advise Mr. Curtin to use more photos and rarer ones too, with this the book would be much more attractive to everyone out there.
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