JF Ptak Science Books LLC Post 149
I have a collection of some fantastically-titled pamphlets and books. After considering their reaching, speculative, bizarre and surreal titles, they fall into a number of sub-categories, including:
--titles with question marks “?” (like the two wonderful pamphlets simply entitled "What ?" and of course the two that have no titles but question marks);
--title with exclamation points “!” (these two marks actually don’t occur very often at all in titles, especially when the title itself already has a built in question/exclamation mark);
--titles that include the phrase “the history of…” or “the story of….” so long as that history/story is (very) unusual;
--titles that demand something or other of “America” (i.e., “Will America be Invaded?” or “America, Mussolini or Moscow” or "Sandbags, Worms and America");
--title pages with American flags.
This excludes a lot of the general naïve-surreal and historical pamphlet collection, but these, I think, would make a great exhibition of book of books, simply because so many of them have an unquestionable “what in the _” reaction capacity to them.
This pamphlet, Mud, its Romantic Story, (by Richard G. Collier, for the Common Brick Manufacturer Association of America, Cleveland, Ohio) is a prime example: a terrific title and a beautiful design. Point of fact though is that it is a lively little history of brick making in America. The good content almost takes away from the fantastic title, but so it goes.
So from time to time I’ll post these titles here even though they really don’t have much to do with the supposed mission of this blog—I’m sure that they’ll be entertaining.
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