On June 8, 1972, a photographer captured the now infamous image of Kim Phuc, a nine-year-old Vietnamese girl, running naked down a Trang Bang highway, her clothes and skin incinerated by American napalm. The photograph was featured in news periodicals around the globe, immediately altering the international perspective of the Vietnam conflict. To the world, Kim became “a living symbol of the horror of war.” In this well-researched, easy-to-follow (and exhaustive) biography, Denise Chong attempts to give an overview of the Vietnam confrontation, and a fair one at that. She focuses on Kim Phuc’s family and has successfully painted through her own on-site research, reading, and interviews the simple peasant world in which they lived, and the attacks they endured from all sides: Invasion by ruthless Chinese-sponsored Communists from the north; manipulation by self-serving, faraway nations in the West; deceit and corruption by greedy leaders within their own ranks; and betrayal by disingenuous neighbors and even family members. Essentially an entire generation of children grew into adults knowing only terror, maiming, death, manipulation, distrust, and self-imposed silence; the latter only if one wanted to live.

Within this world Kim Phuc, fighting daily pains that only a burn victim could know, found her destiny.

Each chapter of Kim’s life a snapshot of almost 40 years roils with emotion, beginning with the miracle of surviving her initial burns. From that tragic moment forward, her mother and family overprotected her and treated her as a weak and ugly burn victim, a woman destined to live her life alone. From high school on, she spent her life shadowed by “minders,” individually assigned hawks for the Vietnamese government who watched her constantly for any transgression of word or deed. Dismissing Kim’s ambition to be a doctor, the Vietnamese Communists took away that dream when they realized she could be used more effectively as a propaganda tool. And as that tool, she suffered the dual life of being pampered as a celebrity when abroad, but treated with disdain, poverty, and starvation when at home. Yet, two words kept falling from Kim’s lips and strengthening her faith: “I forgive.” The South Vietnamese people sought only basic needs. They desired to be left alone, to feed their children, to laugh at each other’s jokes, to work, to worship, to sleep and dream; they didn’t ask to be pawns of superpowers, or victims of land-grab, of endless and esoteric debates concerning communism and capitalism. And Kim Phuc wanted only to be “normal.” It took the face of one child, screaming in pain, nakedly frozen in time, to help bring us all to our senses.

From her modest beginnings in Vietnam to her successful new life in Canada, her dramatic story will set you on fire.

Clay Stafford is a writer and filmmaker who lives near Nashville.

Imagine yourself in the attic at Graceland. There within bulging trunks and boxes lie the masses of photos, letters, telegrams, legal documents, ticket stubs, and receipts that mark Elvis Presley’s uneven passage through life. Imagine further that assiduous elves have laid out all this fascinating material in chronological order for you to savor. Well, that’s pretty much what this book offers.

Peter Guralnick knows more about Presley than Boswell ever suspected about Johnson. He has illuminated the King in numerous articles and the minutely detailed two-volume biography, Last Train to Memphis and Careless Love. Guralnick’s co-author, also an Elvis scholar, has co-produced boxed sets of the singer’s music and annotated his recording sessions.

Here the two researchers go far beyond the information they amassed personally for their own works to plumb the Graceland archives, which now contain, among other treasures, thirty-five tons of records and memorabilia from the estate of Presley’s longtime manager, Colonel Tom Parker. Guralnick credits Parker and Presley’s father Vernon with holding onto material they knew would eventually have great historical interest.

Elvis Day by Day stretches from April 12, 1912, the day Presley’s mother was born, to October 3, 1977, when a CBS-TV special aired Presley concerts filmed earlier that year. It is, as Guralnick says, a kind of biographical exoskeleton. Besides citing Presley’s routine daily activities, the book also lists the dates and places of his live performances and recordings, as well as the release dates of his records. Every known woman Elvis dated a prodigious list to be sure is dutifully noted here.

But the most appealing feature of the book at least to those who are not scholars or zealots is its wealth of photos. There are more than 300 of them, many published for the first time. Among them are pictures of Elvis’s early grade cards, a receipt for his gaudy TCB pendants, bills for jewelry and costumes, numerous candid shots from family and friends, reproductions of movie posters, and a vast array of publicity photos. They offer private glimpses of a man who, for most of his life, had no privacy.

Edward Morris is a Nashville-based writer and journalist.