Titles that begin with the phrase A Brief History of … are no doubt written that way to connote a certain sense of humility, as if the author has been engaged in a casual endeavour and can offer no guarantee that the results will be definitive. The roots of this trend go a few decades back, when titles beginning with the oak-ribbed phrase The History of … — the kind of title that condemned Edward Gibbon to 12 years of writing and his readers to six volumes of reading — were gradually outnumbered by titles beginning with the rather more plastic A History of …. It was all but inevitable that someone would eventually spot the benefits that an adjective like ‘Brief’ could bring to the mix.
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