As you may know, I enjoy a wide variety of reading material. Though I generally buy fiction, when I branch into non-fiction I tend towards the academic world. That mainly means sociology, since that’s my personal area of study, but I occasionally sample related fields, as well.
When you combine “related fields” with “collectible”, you get something like the two old books I picked up at my favourite used-book store:
The Positive School of Criminology, by Enrico Ferri, was published in 1906, and the version I have was printed in 1913. It’s based on some lectures the author gave at an Italian university in 1901. Criminology is an offshoot of sociology which deals with crime and law, and I’m really excited to see how an early criminologist thought.
The Collapse of Capitalism, by Herman Cahn, was printed in 1918 and deals with capitalism and American socialism, from what I can tell so far. Old-timey social theory is always interesting. It’ll be fun to see how many of the author’s references to Marx and Engels I recognize; I’ve read a decent amount of Marx in my own studies.
Along with these two academic/theory collectibles, I grabbed a couple of spy action novels (a Clancy book I didn’t have yet, along with The Janson Directive by Robert Ludlum), so we’ll see if and when I get to those.
Which of these two old books should I read first?
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Blog post: Old Books — http://timsevenhuysen.com/2010/07/21/old...
via Twitoaster
You should ask Karissa if they’re worth anything.
‘The Collapse of Capitalism’ sounds way more interesting, although I doubt it’s as exciting as I think it would be. Also, you should go to the states and read it on public transit to see what the reaction is :)
@Metcarfre: The book store I bought the books from has a “rare/collectible” section, and these weren’t in them; they were in the “old and leather-bound” section. They probably have good ways of finding out if their books are worth anything or not.
I might show them to her anyways, though.
Silly maybe, but I wonder what the covers looked like new.