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This just falls short of five stars, but many because I'm being picky.
The book has a section on names, Amercian (200 female, 200 male and 200 surnames) and then British (again 400 first names, but just 100 surnames this time). It would of been nice to see this expanded to French, German and perhaps Russian and Eastern European names considering it is to support espionage and noir between the two world wars, no need for 400.
I think if I was doing a list like this I'd put a little check box next to the names so I could easily tick off ones I've used.
The section on items is great, particularly "Items in a ..." to help with set dressing and descriptions.
But here comes my little picky complaint, more dates on things would be great. It first shows as an issue in the Best Selling Books, list, but is an issue on other list. The first item is "We Are Not Alone ‐ James Hilton" this was only published in 1937, so if your running a 1920's CoC game it shouldn't be about. Just adding a first published date to this list would let you know if you'ld picked something that was anachronistic so you could select something else. The author has gone to the trouble of putting dates and even costs for the Automobiles list making it much more useful in play at the table. The other lists where this information is missing means you will need to do some research of your own, so while they help with inspiration you need a bit of preparation.
The People lists (due to the lack of dates and much additional information) is probably going to be more use in preparing a scenario rather than in play. The World Leaders list particularly seems to not be very useful at all without additional information. Although the Jobs list will be great if player interrogate random NPCs a bit more in conversation.
The media list again suffers from a lack of dates, except for the Movies which are dated by year, but even better are split into 20's and 30's movies lists.
In Places there is a list of 200 Ghost Towns, which the book suggest could be used as locations of strange events, meeting places or hideouts. I think I would have liked Places chapter to perhaps include a list of small towns, or cities NPCs might have come from, a list of locations like Speakeasy names, or things like warehouses, docks, bowling allys, etc. To be more useful in play.
The Rumours section is great for some background colour, inspiration or adventure seeds.
There is also a very extensive Slang section that's a great addition to the book.
I bought it as a softcover book, and am very happy with my purchase. The book is a bargin as a PDF, and you will probably want to print out a few pages to have to hand at the table, the rest make it an invaluable resource to have during preparation.
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