Remember when a non-fiction book could get away with a short, ambiguous title? Walter Lippmann’s Public Opinion and Ernie Pyle’s Brave Men did not emblazon thesis statements across their front covers. That information was behind the title page.

Compare those titles to a current best-seller like Fleeced: How Barack Obama, Media Mockery of Terrorist Threats, Liberals Who Want to Kill Talk Radio, the Do-Nothing Congress, Companies That Help Iran, and Washington Lobbyists for Foreign Governments Are Scamming Us . . . and What to Do About It. In the interest of space, I won’t cite Dick Morris’s previous work. Suffice it to say that his titles—like those of other contemporary politicians, journalists, and historians—leave little to the imagination.

Peruse The New York Times Best Seller Lists since they first launched in the 1940s and you’ll notice nonfiction book titles have grown longer, more subtitle-laden, and specific. John Sherer of the nonfiction publisher Basic Books explains this trend with the fact that there are simply more books published today. A subtitle helps a book distinguish itself, he says. “There will be hundreds of books about the economic meltdown published this year. Each one has to have a title that’s focused, and an argument that’s clearly laid out.”

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