SPECIAL COMMENTARY

For a fiction-based-on-fact book, the facts are real. This research can be especially time-consuming, and sometimes impossible, when the setting is 50 years ago. Music is a key feature of this work. Over the last two days, I have been in touch with Billboard Magazine. The purpose was to locate lists of top songs for the time period of “A Cheap Education.” Their Research Contact was kind enough to point me in the right direction, although I did need to...