My Secret for Finding Great Background Material

Good writing requires a lot of research. It doesn't matter if you're writing novels or OpEd pieces, you need to know what you're talking about. I'd like to let you in on a li'l secret of mine.

Most of us use the news services and Google the heck out of things. But I can't always be on the computer so I have a back-up resource for tracking down interesting tidbits of information - The Britannica Book of the Year.

It may sound kind of silly, but these books are more useful to me than the Encyclopedia itself. I have almost a complete collection from 1937 through 2006. I'd be lost without them.

For instance, the elephant in pants picture at the top of this article comes from the 1964 yearbook. It's an ad by Cluell, Peabody and Company, Inc., for wrinkle free Sanforized fabrics. Adding the caption made it quite relevant for the GOP today.

Aside from all the background material on things like music, advertising, movies, sports, fashion, life styles, etc., the yearbooks always have fascinating articles written by top experts in their day. Some examples:

1956: Dawn of the Space Age by Robert Truax, U.S.N., which plots a voyage around the moon.

1957: The Problem of Water by Roscoe Fleming, conservationist, speaks to man's use and abuse of water and the land. This is so there for you, Mari.

1959: The West and the Arabs by Historian Arnold Toynbee sheds light on the beginnings of our problems with the Arab world today.

1963: The Craft of Intelligence by Allen Dulles sinks you into the roots of intelligence gathering that pinpoint reasons for problems in the CIA and FBI in our generation.

1964: The New Genetics - The Threads of Life by Nobel Laureate (physiology and medicine) George Beadle opens the door on DNA.

I could go on and on, but I hope you can see the usefulness of these books from a writer's standpoint. And they're cheap too. Some sell for less than a dollar on eBay or less than $10 at used book stores.

Pick up a few. You'll be surprised by what you find in them.

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