What's in a Title?

Today's New York Times' piece on book titles is about capitalizing on trends in the hopes of creating a(nother) bestseller … and about the often absurd titles that result (Obamanomics and Slackonomics appearing after the original Freakonomics, for example).

But this attempt to capture readers by trendy title "has a long pedigree in the publishing industry," the article notes, and it traces several examples, going as far back as the eighteenth century. "Essentially it works until it doesn't work,"