One of the tricks of the trade in academia is: when you pick up a new book, look at the index first. Seeing what terms appear there and which ones have large numbers of references tells you a lot about what the book is about.
I’ve been working on the index to my latest book, a collection of primary sources on the Greco-Persian Wars. Most of the entries are proper names for people, places, and institutions, and their specificity tells you pretty clearly the topic of the book. If you take those out, though, the terms that are left have a strange kind of poetry about them. You could let your imagination wander and dream up some very different books that had these terms in their indices. For your enjoyment:
animals, archers
beer, bees, bread, brick, bridges, bulls
canals, cannibalism, carnelian, cattle, cavalry, chariots, childbirth, clothing, colonies, crown, cuneiform
democracy, diplomacy, disease, dreams
earth and water, earthquakes, esparto, exiles
forgery, fowl, frankincense, frontiers
gifts, goats, gold, grain, guest-friendship
hair, helots, heralds, heroes, hoplites, horses, hostages
incense, ivory
labor, language, lapis lazuli, laws, linen, lions
medicine, mercenaries, merchants, moon, mules, multiculturalism, mummification
oil, ointment, oligarchy, oracles
palaces, papyrus, phalanx, pomegranates, poultry, propaganda
racing, rain, religion, roads
sacrifice, satraps, satrapies, sheep, shields, ships, shipwrecks, sieges, silver, storms, stone
temples, tolerance, tombs, trade, translation, tribute, triremes, turquoise, tyrants
walls, water, wind, wine, wood
How It Happens is an occasional feature looking at the inner workings of various creative efforts.
Co-Geeking 