A couple of days ago, blogger Bittersweet Girl noted with chagrin that
her working title had been swiped out from under her. This sucks, because as one commenter noted, coming up with a good title is hard. My own working title is the fourth iteration (if you count my dissertation title), and the only one that doesn't totally suck. Even so, it's only good, not great.
This got me thinking about really great academic book titles. For me, these have to meet three tests:
1. They should meet the "book spine test": the title, sans descriptive subtitle, should be short enough to fit well on a book spine, and should be intriguing enough to make a browser pick it out and actually look at the covers, front and back, to see what the book is about.
2. They should be more or less obviously related to the topic of the book. You need not be able to tell what the book is about from the title (again, sans descriptive subtitle), but once you know the topic, the title should make perfect sense.
3. They should have a hook -- for me, this means either witty, or evocative. For example, Donald Worster's
Dust Bowl meets criteria #1 & 2, but not 3. His
Rivers of Empire, on the other hand, falls into my "great titles" category.
My colleague, an environmental historian, suggests Richard White's
The Organic Machine. For my money, I go for something outside of my field, a study of disease in early America called
Pox Americana (which some, admittedly, may find too cute by half, but it tickles me).
Other suggestions for favorites? Remember, we're talking here about the title
before the colon. And it need not be a great book; just a great title.