“Don’t judge a book by its cover” may have been good advice when books were leatherbound or clothbound, but the printed dust jacket and the glossy covers of paperbacks with bold graphics and alluring titles made the cover a principal means of attracting a reader to a book.  Still, there remain some communities that continue to judge the value of books—and, in particular, scholarly books—by their physical attributes, such as a preface, a bibliography, footnotes, and a tabl...