Continuing . . .
15. Texas: A Chronological & Documentary History, no. 1339. This is one of the state versions of the Oceana books. They are nearly uniformly terrible. They're okay for some states where the state has a lot of real history, the more important Colonial states, for instance, and indeed this Texas volume isn't bad. But for many of the western states in particular, they just suck. For the census years, you get nothing but the census. In many of the formative years, you get nothing but the names of newly formed counties. I have a lot of other state history sources, and the Oceana series will miss stuff that the other books get, important stuff. They were cheap, they don't take up much space, but I looked at all the ones I have (maybe 20) and only two had any entry at all for 1961. The question I am writing here is only interesting in contradistinction to the prior question (and I rarely write follow-ups).
16. Abingdon Church: A Chronology of its History. A D, no. 176. This is an example of what I call the concept of "burning a source." I suspect if I were to read the entire Abingdon Church chronology I might find five or six facts of general interest to triviots. But they are few and far between. I bought the book, witness the book number, quite early in my game-writing career, on eBay if memory serves. It wasn't expensive and I've used it faithfully. It has the advantage of covering most years (it goes from 1650 to 1970) at least with some fact, though it's often "the church roof cost $23 dollars to repair." There are a number of sources like this, and they're like bad tasting medicine, you want to take them quickly. So when I find a fact in one of them, I just burn it, meaning I write the damn question and go on. Do not expect to go, "I've always wondered about that" when the question relates to Abingdon Church. It's in Virginia, btw.
17. Cuba and the United States. This is sort of halfway between a B and a D, which is odd. It actually starts in 1492, but you're on page 8 when you get to the Spanish-American War and page 18 when you get to the Cuban Revolution, which began on January 1, 1959. 1995 ends on page 381, so you can see what I mean. No. 65, great source in the covered time period and of course 1961 is part of the real sweet spot for it.
18. It's a Hit. A solid C, it covers Broadway hits in the 20th century. I have a number of similar books; Broadway is a mixed blessing for Flashback because its season starts in the fall and you have to be careful to make sure you get facts that are in the right year. No. 98, another old reliable. And 1961 is an interesting year on Broadway.
19. UFOs and the National Security State. I have a number of sources where I don't necessarily agree with the point of view of the author. Probably the most obvious of these is one called "The Catastrophe," a history of the establishment of the State of Israel from the non-Zionist point of view. But if the source is historically accurate, or I can work through its bias (not to say I don't have my own), then I use it. "The Catastrophe" is actually a very good source in a lot of ways. This UFO source is actually quite excellent, since it refers to the specifics of what people claimed to see, without being all that judgmental about whether they saw anything. It does sort of go off on the government explanations in places, but what do you expect from something with this title? It's no. 845 and a solid B.
20. Timelines. Sometimes I buy the same book twice. Sometimes it's because it's an updated edition. If I really like the book, I might log the new edition separately. In this case, the book changed its title. The first edition is Timelines and the second is "From Elvis to Email." It's a wonderful, wonderful source, one of the best you'll ever see, covering every year from the end of World War II to, in this case, 1990, in great detail, not only chronologically within the year, but with summaries with titles like "Fads and Trends" and my personal favorite "[the year] in buttons and bumper stickers." Always fun, always good to lighten up a serious year (and 1961 can be pretty damn serious, what with the Bay of Pigs and the space race and the civil rights movement). No. 1598 and a B.
21. Sci-Fi Movies. New book, but we'll give it the second number used by Race Relations in the United States, no. 2074. This is part of a series that breaks down movie genres. I have the "Noir Movies" one, too, but I think this one is better, because it covers a broader time period. It's a D, since the first movie it lists is in 1902. I only have one specific book on 60s movies, so we'll use this one here and keep the other for 1966 most likely.
22. A Chronology of the People's Republic of China. A B, no. 178, and a redoubtable source, covering every year from 1949 to 1984 in some depth, even though it's only 99 pages long. An example of how to write a short, useful chronology. Which is interesting since it was published by the Foreign Language Press in Beijing. The commies learned to do something well, huh?
23. Two Hundred Years of New Zealand History. No. 74, an obvious D. It's the only general history of New Zealand I have. I like to switch off where I use it, sometimes reserving it for a nineteenth century year, because it covers them well, and sometimes using it in a year like this one, because I have no freaking clue what happened in New Zealand between indepedence and the filming of The Lord of the Rings (which, coincidentally, I'm watching as I type this--Boromir just bought it).
24. Encyclopedia of Hit: the 1960s. Guess what: it's a B, no. 575. Not a lot of explanation needed, but this book is good in having short (paragraph long) descriptions of the songs. Something you can hang your hat on if you don't know the songs too well. However, the song that will be in the question was ubiquitous where I was at the time. Which might be a hint, a reward for reading this far.
25. T.S. Eliot: A Chronology of His Life and Works. Between a B and a C, since Eliot is about to die in a couple years. No. 631, and notable for being part of a Macmillan series of author chronologies but not having the same cover as all the other ones (and I have over 20). They range from unbelievably great to just good, but that's in part based on how interesting the author's life was. Eliot's life . . . top notch.
26. Getty Images, The 1960's. An obvious B and another I could burn in 1961 or 1966 and chose 1961. This Getty series is tricky. There is one on each decade of the twentieth century and I have them all. But some of the volumes are better for Flashback than others. The ones on the teens and forties, for instance, focus so much on the appropriate world war that the other years of the decade are only covered cursorily. The Sixties, I suspect, will focus more on the early and the later years and less on the middle. I figure there's gotta be a space shot, a Bay of Pigs shot, an Inauguration shot, something, right?
27. A Dream of Freedom. Another B, it covers the Civil Rights Movement from 1954 to 1968. The Civil Rights Movement really lends itself to chronology and so is chronologized ad infinitum, which is good. The other thing that is chronologized to death is aviation. You can get some good books on automobiles by year, almost none on ships and virtually none on railroads (which is odd, because a really good and comprehensive railroad chronology would be great--there are tons of railroad books but they are nearly all in topical order or are in narrative form if they are chronological). But airplanes? You betcha! This book is no. 1482.
We're at the end of the top row of books, so we'll see you in the next entry.
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