Historical
A reference book covering 1955 to 1969 feels oddly appealing to me. Not as something to sit down and read straight through, obviously. That would be a fairly dedicated way to spend an evening. But as a browsing book, with sharp entries you can dip into when a particular year or event starts nagging at you, it sounds exactly right.
There’s something useful about a history volume that doesn’t pretend every reader wants a grand march from start to finish. Sometimes the best books are the ones that let you wander a bit.
There’s something useful about a history volume that doesn’t pretend every reader wants a grand march from start to finish. Sometimes the best books are the ones that let you wander a bit.
The 1955 to 1969 stretch is a neat one for a reference book, because it’s close enough to feel familiar, but far enough back that the details have gone slightly feral. I’d be more interested in the entries that catch the odd cultural side streets than the obvious headline events. Those are usually the bits that make a period feel alive, rather than just well catalogued.
The date range is doing a lot of work there. 1955 to 1969 is broad enough to catch huge cultural shifts, but still narrow enough to feel searchable rather than encyclopaedic. That makes it more interesting than a single straight history, at least to me. Reference books are often at their best when they behave like a set of doors instead of a corridor.