Mao’s Head: The Quest for the Perfect Title

By Michael Engelhard

“What’s in a title?” riffs David Petersen in Writing Naturally, his down-to-earth guide for aspiring nature writers. A good title, he answers himself, must grab a browsing reader’s attention, foreshadow what is to follow, and prompt you to flip over a book for its back cover text or, more likely nowadays, click on its link for a synopsis. 

Titles have long been considered to be the single most important piece of advertising for a book, from Daniel Defoe’s sixty-five...