What is your favorite part of history to read/learn about?

I'm a 60s junkie. Basically beginning with the campaign leading up to the 1960 election, through the crumbling of the Nixon administration. That's really the period of 1959 - 1974. I was an American History major in college, but my focus was on that period.

I just think that period is so fascinating at so many levels. Politically, you have the young, outsider Catholic presidency that captures the public attention in a way not really seen before - and his tragic assassination, followed by two clinically paranoid career politicians undone by their own psychoses. In foreign policy, you have the greatest threat to the end of the modern world ever experienced (Missile Crisis) and the deep solidification of the Cold War, and the containment doctrine misplaced in Southeast Asia pushing us to sacrifice more than 60,000 to try to save a corrupt, feudalistic, agricultural nation from itself. In domestic policy, you have the Civil Rights movement, the student movement, and the Anti-war movement all coming against resistance that culminated with some truly shameful episodes in how Americans treat each other. And in culture, you have a complete explosion of color - with the sudden emergence of rock/pop music as a creative and political force, and similar paradigm shifts in fashion, art, stage, etc.

I still read non-fiction and watch documentaries on that era with much more vigor than any other. I truly can't get enough.