The best books are usually the smallest.

For example: the canonical book on English writing style is Strunk and White — whose fourth edition contains just over one hundred pages and fits easily into one’s pocket. Strunk and White does its job so well that Kernighan and Plaugher consciously imitated it when writing The Elements of Programming Style, including its brevity: the first edition of Kernighan and Plaugher weighs in near 150 pages, though its format is somewhat larger than pocket-sized.

The pinnacle of the excellent-small-book art may be Jeff Cooper’s excellent Principles of Personal Defense, which requires fewer than fifty pages to convey the essential mindset of protecting one’s person against violent assault. A reader interested in brevity as well as quality would also do well to read Fairbairn’s Get Tough!, which in just over 120 pages conveys the essential techniques of protecting one’s person.

On a lighter note, the Principia Discordia (or How I Found Goddess, and What I Did to Her When I Found Her) is one of the funniest works of subversive satire ever penned. Voltaire’s Candide is none too long, either, although my copy is beautifully illustrated and somewhat bulky.

All hail small books!