It is true that you can’t judge a book by its cover. It’s also true that the title of a book does not tell the whole story. Sometimes, however, the title tells just enough to pique the interest of a reader the a sufficient level that he or she will pick up a book that otherwise would be left untouched.

The Diagram Prize is awarded by the British trade magazine The Bookseller. It is given out annually to the book with the most unusual title. Some of the winners have been mentioned in previous Commonplace Fun Facts articles. Here, we offer a more-or-less comprehensive list of the winners from the inception to now. A couple of winners have been excluded because the title or topic didn’t quite match up with the family-friendly standards we try to maintain.

If anyone is aware of the movie rights being sold for any of these tomes, please let us know. We can envision a Hollywood blockbuster based on People Who Don’t Know They’re Dead: How They Attach Themselves to Unsuspecting Bystanders and What to Do About It, starring Johnny Depp and Barney the Dinosaur.

Diagram Prize Winners By Year

Year	Title	Author	Subject
1978	Proceedings of the Second International Workshop on Nude Mice	Various authors	Medical studies done using laboratory mice with inhibited immune systems
1979	The Madam as Entrepreneur: Career Management in House Prostitution	Barbara Sherman Heyl	About working in prostitution
1980	The Joy of Chickens	Dennis Nolan	About breeds of chickens
1981	Last Chance at Love – Terminal Romances	Various authors	Presumably, it’s about romances involving terminally-ill people. We were unable to find a copy anywhere online.
1982	Population and Other Problems: Family Planning, Housing 1,000 Million, Labour Employment	Various authors	About the demographics of the People’s Republic of China
1983	Unsolved Problems of Modern Theory of Lengthwise Rolling	A. I. Tselikov, G. S. Nikitin and S. E. Rokotyan	About rolling as a metalworking technique
1984	The Book of Marmalade: Its Antecedents, Its History, and Its Role in the World Today	Anne Wilson	About the history of marmalade
1985	Natural Bust Enlargement with Total Power: How to Increase the Other 90% of Your Mind to Increase the Size of Your Breasts	Donald L. Wilson	About bust enlargement through positive thinking
1986	Oral Sadism and the Vegetarian Personality	Glenn C. Ellenbogen	Humorous and parody articles about psychiatry.
1988	Versailles: The View from Sweden	Elaine Dee and Guy Walton	Catalogue of an exhibition at the Cooper–Hewitt Museum on the influence of French Baroque and Classicism on design in contemporary Sweden.
1989	How to [Poop] in the Woods: An Environmentally Sound Approach to a Lost Art	Kathleen Meyer	About responsible treatment of one’s waste in wilderness areas
1992	How to Avoid Huge Ships	John W. Trimmer	Advice to pleasure boat sailors on the dangers of shipping lanes
1993	American Bottom Archaeology	Charles J. Bareis and James W. Porter	Full title American Bottom Archaeology: A Summary of the FAI-270 Project Contribution to the Culture History of the Mississippi River Valley
1994	Highlights in the History of Concrete	C. C. Stanley	About the history of concrete
1995	Reusing Old Graves: A Report on Popular British Attitudes	Douglas Davies and Alastair Shaw	About reusing old graves
1996	Greek Rural Postmen and Their Cancellation Numbers	Derek Willan	Cancellation numbers in the Hellenic Post
1998	Developments in Dairy Cow Breeding: New Opportunities to Widen the Use of Straw	Gareth Williams	The title says it all
1999	Weeds in a Changing World: British Crop Protection Council Symposium Proceedings No. 64	Charles H. Stirton	About techniques in weed control
2000	Designing High Performance Stiffened Structures	IMechE (Institution of Mechanical Engineers)	About stiffness in engineering
2001	Butterworths Corporate Manslaughter Service	Gerard Forlin	About corporate manslaughter, i.e. corporate liability for manslaughter
2002	Living with Crazy Buttocks	Kaz Cooke	Humorous essays on contemporary culture, including female body image and other topics.
2004	Bombproof Your Horse	Rick Pelicano and Lauren Tjaden	Full title Bombproof Your Horse: Teach Your Horse to Be Confident, Obedient, and Safe, No Matter What You Encounter
2005	People Who Don’t Know They’re Dead: How They Attach Themselves to Unsuspecting Bystanders and What to Do About It	Gary Leon Hill	About dead spirits who took up residence in bodies that did not belong to them
2006	The Stray Shopping Carts of Eastern North America: A Guide to Field Identification	Julian Montague	About how to identify abandoned shopping carts
2008	The 2009–2014 World Outlook for 60-milligram Containers of Fromage Frais	Philip M. Parker	Computer-generated combination of boilerplate text and public-domain data related to fromage frais, a type of cheese. This selection generated controversy because the book was not written by the listed author, but by a machine of the author’s invention. We would tell you more about this, but the only available copy we could find is going for $2,376.99 on Amazon.
2009	Crocheting Adventures with Hyperbolic Planes	Daina Taimina	Mathematical book featuring crocheted hyperbolic planes.
2010	Managing a Dental Practice: The Genghis Khan Way	Michael R. Young	How-to guide on managing a dental practice.
2011	Cooking with Poo	Saiyuud Diwong	Thai cookbook – “Poo” (“ปู”) is Saiyuud Diwong’s nickname
2012	Goblinproofing One’s Chicken Coop	Reginald Bakeley	Guide to banishing fairies from your home.
2013	How to Poo on a Date	Mats & Enzo	“The Lovers’ Guide to Toilet Etiquette”.
2014	Strangers Have the Best Candy	Margaret Meps Schulte	Self-published travelogue.
2015	Too Naked For the Nazis	Alan Stafford	Biography of Wilson, Keppel and Betty published by Fantom Films.
2016	The Commuter Pig Keeper: A Comprehensive Guide to Keeping Pigs when Time is your Most Precious Commodity	Michaela Giles	Practical guide to looking after a small herd of pigs.
2018	The Joy of Waterboiling	Thomas Götz von Aust	First non-English language book to win (published in German with English title).
2019	The Dirt Hole and its Variations	Charles L Dobbins	First posthumous author to win.
2020	A Dog [Peeing] at the Edge of a Path: Animal Metaphors in Eastern Indonesian Society	Gregory Forth	First Canadian author to win.

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