For months I've been meaning to comment on something I've noticed about nonfiction books these days: They must have a subtitle, and the longer the better. For instance, here are the nonfiction books reviewed or mentioned in today's NYT Book Review:
- Speaking Freely: Trials of the First Amendment
- John Brown, Abolitionist: The Man Who Killed Slavery, Sparked the Civil War, and Seeded Civil Rights
- The Peabody Sisters: Three Women Who Ignited American Romanticism
- The Breaking Point: Hemingway, Dos Passos, and the Murder of José Robles
- The Tomb in Seville: Crossing Spain on the Brink of Civil War
- Evidence of Harm: Mercury in Vaccines and the Autism Epidemic: A Medical Controversy (Look at that! A sub-subtitle!)
- Evening in the Palace of Reason: Bach Meets Frederick the Great in the Age of Enlightenment
- American Traveler: The Life and Adventures of John Ledyard, the Man Who Dreamed of Walking the World
- Free Culture: The Nature and Future of Creativity
- Gay Marriage: Why It Is Good for Gays, Good for Straights, and Good for America
- Civil Wars: The Battle for Gay Marriage
- Paths of Desire: The Passions of a Suburban Gardener
- Out of Gas: The End of the Age of Oil
- Forgotten Armies: The Fall of British Asia, 1941–1945
- A Great Improvisation: Franklin, France, and the Birth of America
- A Land of Ghosts: The Braided Lives of People and the Forest in Far Western Amazonia
- Ponzi's Scheme: The True Story of a Financial Legend
- Mimi and Toutou's Big Adventure: The Bizarre Battle of Lake Tanganyika
Isn't this getting a bit out of hand? And this week's list is not by any means anomalous. Not a single nonfiction book sports just a title.
I guess with titles, subtitles and the occasional sub-subtitle it saves us from having to open up the book to see if it's of interest.
Posted by: Lora | April 17, 2005 at 05:56 PM