Tips for using apostrophes to signal possession

Nouns can only 'own' other nouns.

Compare these examples:

Example 1: The book's cover was considered radical at the time.
Example 2: The books covered a wide range of topics.

In example 1, the apostrophe signals that the book is the owner of the cover.

In example 2, we can tell that there should be no apostrophe in the word books because the word following books is a verb and so can't be owned. We can also tell that there should be no apostrophe in the word books because the 's' attached to book is signalling plurality, more than one book, not possession.

The noun may 'own' more than a single noun.

In academic writing it is common to find that the thing being owned is a nominal phrase or group rather than a single noun. Notice in the following example that Bartlett owns an entity that is described by a whole phrase rather than a single noun.

Bartlett's imprecisely controlled and measured experimental techniques = the imprecisely controlled and measured experimental techniques of Bartlett.
The author's postmodernist feminist interpretation = the postmodernist feminist interpretation of the author.