Ordering a book called SCOUTS IN BONDAGE might land you on an FBI red-flag database. Luckily for you and your arrest record, SCOUTS IN BONDAGE AND OTHER VIOLATIONS OF LITERARY PROPERTY will get you into no such trouble.

Edited by UK secondhand bookseller Michael Bell, this slim volume is an impressive collection of questionably impressive tomes from simpler times, when one thing meant something entirely different than it does today. Thus, we get covers for meant-to-be-totally-innocent books like 50 FAGGOTS and INVISIBLE DICK.

Double entendres aside, it’s equally as humorous to see what passed for cover art way back then. For example, a volume carrying the vague title of GIRLS’ INTERESTS depicts two young, lily-white American women presumably vacationing in exotic India, utterly delighted by the sight of the dark-skinned foreign man coaxing a big, long snake out of his hiding place. Read into that what you will; that’s why it’s here.

Bell offers no commentary on his selections, merely letting the hokey covers speak for themselves, aside from cursory book-nerd info like publication dates and trim sizes. Sometimes this lack of perspective is to SCOUTS’ detriment, when you’ll wonder why something seemingly non-salicious like ROCK CLIMBS ROUND LONDON merited inclusion.

Most, however, are startlingly obvious and, therefore, funny. It may only take you five minutes to read, but you’ll want to hang on to it as a time capsule of a publishing era when leprosy how-tos were all the rage. –Rod Lott

Buy it at Amazon.