Tim Sevenhuysen.com My courageous quest to make the world slightly less humdrum.

21Jul/105

Old Books

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:

Old books!

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?

Which book should I read first?

  • The Positive School of Criminology (57%, 8 Votes)
  • The Collapse of Capitalism (43%, 6 Votes)

Total Voters: 14

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