The subtitle read round the world
Richard Adams charts a disturbing new trend in book subtitles in a funny piece for the Guardian. Adams traces this phenomenon back to Mark Kurlansky’s Cod: A Biography of the Fish That Changed the World, a book that not only launched a new subgenre of book-length biographies of ordinary things (animals, minerals, medicines, etc.), but upped the ante in the high-stakes game of hyperbolic, non-fiction subtitles. Now, Adams, argues, you can’t pick up a non-fiction title without the ubiquitous claim that its subject impacted the course of human history: “In September we will be able to buy a book on concerts subtitled ‘gigs that changed the world’. In June we can get our hands on a book about the sheep that changed the world. And next month there’s the chance to buy a book on gunpowder, the explosive that changed the world (presumably by blowing up bits of it).”
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Read Richard Adams’ opinion piece in the Guardian
