The Ultimate 70th Birthday Trivia Book

Who this book is for

A man turning seventy, and whoever is trying to find him something better than another bottle of something.

It is built to be opened at the table, on the day, with other people in the room — not read alone afterwards.

The idea

Trivia books usually test what you know. This one asks about what you were there for.

The questions run decade by decade through one American life: the television, the music, the sport and the headlines of the years a man born in the mid-1950s actually lived through. Someone at the table will remember the answer before anyone finishes reading the question, and that is the whole design. The book is a way of getting a room talking.

Which also means it works when the guest of honour is quiet, or tired, or not much for being the centre of attention. Nobody has to perform. They just have to remember.

What is inside

Nine chapters, in order:

• Born into the boom — the late 1950s
• Growing up — the early 1960s
• Turning teen — the late 1960s
• Coming of age — the early 1970s
• Making your way — the late 1970s
• Prime time — the 1980s
• The fast lane — the 1990s
• A new millennium — the 2000s
• Still going strong — the 2010s to today

194 questions with answers, plus bonus puzzles — word searches and criss-crosses built from the same material, for the quieter part of the afternoon.

Genuine large print

Not a marketing line. The type size, the spacing and the paper were chosen for someone reading across a table in ordinary room light, without reaching for glasses first.

This is the reason the book is 6 × 9 inches and 181 pages for 194 questions: the same content set smaller would fit in half the space and be no use to the person it was made for.

Paperback only

The Kindle edition has been withdrawn. Puzzle grids and write-in pages do not survive a reflowable e-reader — the grids become pictures you cannot solve, and the pages meant for a pencil are simply pictures of pages.

We would rather say that plainly than sell an edition that does not work. The paperback is the book.

A note on what it is not

It is a party game, not a history. The questions are about popular memory — the songs, the shows, the moments people talked about — and they are pitched to be answerable by someone who was alive at the time, not to test scholarship.

181 pages, 6 × 9 inches

Paperback, large print. Part of the Milestone Birthday Trivia series.