The Encyclopedia of Sixties Cool: A Celebration of the Grooviest People, Events, and Artifacts of...

The Encyclopedia of Sixties Cool: A Celebration of the Grooviest People, Events, and Artifacts of the 1960s | Chris Strodder | Time Capsule to A Treasured Time

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	The Encyclopedia of Sixties Cool: A Celebration of the Grooviest People, Events, and Artifacts of the 1960s Chris Strodder Santa Monica Press, 2007 - 336 pages average customer review:based on 11 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

A celebration of the 1960s, this encyclopedia profiles the 250 most interesting personalities who significantly changed popular culture, including musicians, actors, directors, artists, athletes, politicians, writers, and astronauts. Sidebars provide a trip down memory lane with lists including the top movies, television shows, cars, Bond girls, Playmates, concerts, and cameos in beach movies, plus a running calendar of "what happened on this date" that lines the margin of each page for a day-by-day review of the most influential decade of the 20th century.

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The Bible for Ring-a-Ding-Ding Revolutionaries

No other decade in modern history was as influential, eclectic and packed with passion as the 1960s. From politics to pop culture, the 60s offered an incredible array of sights, sounds and swingin' sensations. It was the decade of Batman, Bond, the Beatles, bongs, Barbarella, beatniks, beach bunnies and Bob Dylan. From the Rat Pack at the dawn of the decade to the Rolling Stones at its zenith, from Motown to monster movie magazines, from drive-ins to dope, the 60s offered something for jet setters, hippies, suburban kids, surfers, radicals and fun lovin' freaks alike. There were also the tragedies, like JFK, Bobby, MLK and Viet Nam, that still resonate and affect our world today. And let's not forget the sexual revolution underlying this tumultuous explosion of art and war. Chris Strodder has already given us an essential chronicle of this era's sexual icons with his colorful tome "Swingin Chicks of the 60s." Now he broadens his lens to give us a widescreen view of the entire decade, spotlighting all the major figures who had such a powerful impact on all of us born before, during and since, from Hugh Hefner to Abby Hoffman to Andy Warhol and everyone in between and beyond, encompassing an amazing array of styles and attitudes, all of which are still very much evident in today's kaleidoscope, retro-obsessed but identity-challenged culture. Get Smart and Ride this Wild Surf, kids. It's groooooovy.

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Time Capsule to A Treasured Time

Anyone who contrasts the stresses of the new century with this special decade in the last one, can really appreciate this book. It brings us back to a better time in our lives. Despite the Vietnam War, a lot was going on in America that could be celebrated, and this book brings it all back for us. Great antidote to high blood pressure! Great memory prodder! I thoroughly enjoyed revisiting the highlights of the sixties and the "cool" personalities who entertained us then, and, if only in the interest of spicing up the conversation at cocktail parties, I highly recommend absorbing the information in this book! -- Joanne ORoark, Santa Barbara, CA

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A great gift for yourself or loved one.

What a great book! A wealth of trivia, some of it well known, some not so. But all totally fascinating. We just kept turning the pages to find more & more interesting people & facts. Great also to see it covering more than just the States. The 60s were a world wide event & Chris has captured icons from across the globe.

Great fun, but do you agree with the emphasis?

First off, I agree with the majority opinion that THE ENCYCLOPEDIA OF SIXTIES COOL is great fun - since it came in I keep carrying it around to read one gripping entry after another. The emphasis is on people of the Sixties, and of quite a variety - singers, actors, athletes, artists, writers, politicians, astronauts - though entertainers are by far the majority. Also, the sidebars of data are very interesting and clever too. Srodder writes in a breezy, polished style that is very enjoyable, and he's either done a lot of research or just knows a heck of a lot about the era.

Still, I have a few reservations about the book. First off, one could debate the meaning of "cool" with the author. The vast majority of the book is devoted to famous entertainers - singers, actors, athletes. There are relatively few non-entertainers here, as, I was glad to see that Neil Armstrong of Moon fame gets his own entry, and some political figures like the Kennedys get theirs too. The ichthyologist Eugenie Clark made the list, but there aren't many scientists discussed in here. A few writers such as Kurt Vonnegut make it in. And some of the entertainers discussed are not even very significant, but are more cult figures. One could reasonably argue that it's just as "cool" to be making contributions to society in science, teaching, environmental protection, and the like as it is to be a famous entertainer. Strodder admits in the introduction that there was a lot he hated to leave out of his book, but with 334 pages to work with he had to draw a line somewhere. However, I'm probably trying to be too scholarly about it, since this book is clearly supposed to be fun, and relates mainly to popular culture that those who lived through the Sixties would most remember as being cool about the decade. Secondly, the book very much needs an index, or at least better cross-referencing. Most subjects have their own headings, arranged alphabetically. Yet there are a lot of people or things that are discussed under headings that you might not be able to guess. For instance, the comic strip Peanuts is discussed in the entry for the composer Vince Guaraldi, who wrote music for the animated Peanuts shows in the 1960s and '70s, yet there's no separate entry in the book for Peanuts or its creator Charles Schulz. Likewise, John Glenn and most of the other Mercury astronauts don't have separate entries, since they're discussed under "Alan Shepard." There are quite a few such examples, though there is some cross-referencing on the contents page.

Shifting back to what I like best about this EncyCOOLpedia, another aspect that I very much like is that Strodder tries to be positive, and focus more on what is good than what is bad about someone or something. And it's great that he always remembers to update us on "whatever happened to?" these people. All in all, THE ENCYCLOPEDIA OF SIXTIES COOL is very enjoyable, and it's a fun way to learn about that fascinating decade.

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Not a complete disappointment, but still...

A lot of the book is just a rehash of Strodder's Swingin' Chicks of the 60's. I was disappointed that there were not photos for each subject in the encyclopedia. That being said, this is still a good book to have, but a bit of a let-down if you are expecting the same quality as Swingin' Chicks of the 60's.

reviews: page 1, 2, 3

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