A brief history v. the brief history - what explains the difference in function?

Question

I'm puzzling over a difference in sense between two expressions as I've seen them in titles of texts. Here they are with examples:

A Brief History. Brief modifies history, which here seems to refer to the genre of text being written - history as overview or as a narrative focused on progression over time. It is a brief history, the indefinite article denoting that other histories may be written, but this is one of them. Time is not brief; the history is brief relative to the thing being written about. (For time, "brief" is a whole book! For the internet, that's a few paragraphs.)

A Brief History of Time

A Brief History of Triplet Repeat Diseases

A Brief History of the Internet

The Brief History. Brief modifies history, which here seems to refer to the actual span of time or series of events in question: "Americanitis," Volumetric Filmmaking, and the city of the Dead are all brief phenomena. The focuses on this concept: there is only one definite history of this concept, and the title specifies that it tells this history.

The Brief History of "Americanitis"

The Brief History of Volumetric Filmmaking

The Brief History of the Dead

What creates this difference feels subtle in a way that goes beyond conventional article guides. The article is definitely involved in creating a difference, but I have trouble generalizing to other examples. So I have two related questions:

A. What explains this? Is it:

1. History referring to both a kind of text and a kind of narrative?
2. Brief, as an adjective, highlighting how a quality of history might be understood differently?
3. A or the, as articles, signalling whether history is more likely to be indefinite or definite?
4. Attributable more to context (title convention), idiomatic patterns, or other things?

B: Are there examples of this principle working with other article+adjective+noun combinations, or is it distinct to this?

Answer 1

A Brief History indicates the class to which the present work belongs, "Brief Histories".

A Brief History of The Roman Empire

The Brief History of X refers to X's history in particular. X has been, or was, in existence for only a brief time.

The Brief History of Pet Rocks
The Brief History of Disco

P.S. It's also possible that a particular brief history may come to be regarded as the definitive, quintessential brief history of its subject, the best of them all:

As brief histories of the Roman Empire go, this one is the brief history.