Arts: What Books Titled What X Can Teach Us About Y Can Teach Us About Publishing

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Brow Beat What Books Titled What X Can Teach Us About Y Can Teach Us About Publishing By L. V. Anderson Posted Thursday, Jan 05, 2012, at 08:59 PM ET Judging from the book catalogs stacked on my desk, 2012 is shaping up to be a banner year in things teaching us things about other things. January will see the publication of Shimon Edelman's The Happiness of Pursuit: What Neuroscience Can Teach Us About the Good Life, following closely on the heels of Andreas Kluth's Hannibal and Me: What History's Greatest Military Strategist Can Teach Us About Success and Failure. In the spring, we'll get to read Darwin's Devices: What Evolving Robots Can Teach Us About the History of Life and the Future of Technology and Zoobiquity: What Animals Can Teach Us About Health and the Science of Healing (not to be confused with 2005's Raising the Peaceable Kingdom: What Animals Can Teach Us About the Social Origins of Tolerance and Friendship). By Slate's count, at least 18 books following the "what X can teach us about Y" (henceforth WXCTUAY) formula were published in 2011 or are slated for publication in 2012. (As you may have noticed, we have a thing for popular book-title formulas.) Why the sudden explosion of edification from unexpected sources? The WXCTUAY trend is part of a larger trend of subtitles raging out of control. Publishers want a title to be pithy and attractive, so it can't be too lengthy or significant: Nobody's going to stop and check out a book with a title longer than five or six words, and two or three are even better ... To continue reading, click here. Join the Fray: our reader discussion forum What did you think of this article? POST A MESSAGE | READ MESSAGES Also In Slate Lithwick: The Awesome Montana Judges Who Just Said Hell No to Citizens United Learn Programming in 2012. It Will Make You More Employable—and It's Kind of Fun. Why Do Women Vote Differently Than Men?	Advertisement
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