Blood, Peter, and Annie Patterson. Rise Up Singing: The Group Singing Song Book

Contains the "words, chords, and sources to 1200 songs," grouped loosely by themes such as "America," "Hard Times & Blues," and "Women." Sources are everything from very traditional music to sixties protest songs to Bob Dylan and the Beatles and Broadway musicals.

It's a very useful book if you have just enough interest in folk music. If you have more than just enough, then you'll want something more authoritative, maybe with melody lines included, certainly with more detail and sourcing; aside from that, you have to be impressed at a book that includes everything from "Beans in my Ears" to "All Clear in Harrisburg" to "Taft-Hartley" to "My Mom's a Feminist."

Many of the songs (if you couldn't tell from the titles) do feel a little dated in our ironic generation, and the book will be much more valuable if you think of yourself as a hippie, at least a little bit. But for every song I snickered at under my breath, I found one to say "Oh, that song! Yay!"