Publisher's Weekly's Soap Box has a hilarious article in the current issue on "prologues, prefaces, introductions, forewords and other ways to clear your throat":
by Laurence Hughes -- Publishers Weekly, 8/17/2009
".... The introduction is as different from the preface as a hot dog is from a frankfurter. It was created, separate and distinct from the preface, to answer a very pressing need. Unfortunately no one alive today remembers what that was. The introduction also provides recourse for superstitious authors whose books turn out to be 13 chapters in length. Not wishing to tempt fate, they will designate Chapter 1 the Introduction and renumber the other chapters 1–12, in the hope of avoiding bad luck and misfortune. Truman Capote is known to have done this with the final draft of In Cold Blood. Two days later, he was run over by the Hampton Jitney, so the effectiveness of this ploy is still in...
