Search results
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LE PLAY, Frédéric.
EMERSON, Gouverneur, translator. The organization of labor in accordance with custom and the law of the Decalogue;...
Philadelphia, Claxton, Remsen and Haffelfinger, 1872.
First edition in English of Le Play’s L’organisation du travail (1870). Emerson was a Quaker doctor who eventually gave up his practice to devote himself to political economy, hence the slightly unexpected appearance of this first translation in Philadelphia, where Emerson lived. He died suddenly...
£75
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LE PLAY, Frédéric.
L’organisation de la famille, selon le vrai modèle signalé par l’histoire de toutes les races et de...
Paris, Técqui, 1871.
First edition. This is one of the most important of the group of later works in which Le Play applied the empirical research he used for Les ouvriers européens (1855) to more specific subjects (see also the work above). In La famille Le Play analyzes books of accounts and budgets kept...
£75
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LEWES, George Henry.
The physiology of common life.
New York, Appleton, 1860.
First American edition, scarce in commerce, first published 1859. A serious work of physiological biology by the self-taught scientist, known for his supposedly humane experiments (using ether and chloroform) on the nervous systems of frogs, which he describes here. Darwin is not mentioned, but Lewes’s...
£125
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MARSHALL, Alfred.
Official papers.
London, Macmillan for the Royal Economic Society, 1926.
First edition, a collection of Marshall’s work on boards, committees and commissions, including the Gold and Silver Commission, the Royal Commission on the Aged Poor and the Indian Currency Committee, and his memoranda on fiscal policy and taxation.
£65
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MITCHELL, Wesley Clair.
Gold, prices, and wages under the greenback standard.
Berkeley, University Press, 1908.
First edition, rare in commerce, a statistical essay in continuation of A history of the greenbacks (1903). Statistical analysis was a significant part of Mitchell’s early work, of which this is the weighty apotheosis, both intellectually, and physically (this is a heavy book). Taken from censuses,...
£225
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MOODY, William Godwin.
Our labor difficulties: the cause, and the way out; being a practical solution of the labor problem.
Boston, Williams, 1878.
First edition thus, presumably the first appearance of Moody’s pamphlet on unemployment, the copyright for which is dated 1877; another edition was issued in the same year with reference to a paper, delivered at the annual meeting of the American Social Science Association on 24 May, regarding the...
£175
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MORGAN, Lewis Henry.
Ancient society or researches in the lines of human progress from savagery, through barbarism to civilization.
New York, Holt, 1877.
First edition. Morgan’s influential work was considered by Marx and Engels to be putatively supportive of materialist history. Marx’s notes on this book were reputedly the source for Engels’s Origins of the family, of private property and the state, published in German in 1844. Morgan posits a...
£400
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ODUM, Howard Washington and Guy Benton JOHNSON.
Negro workaday songs.
Chapel Hill and London, University of North Carolina Press and Milford, Oxford University Press, 1926.
First edition. This book continues Odum’s interest, demonstrated in a minor way in the above work, in the folk songs and oral history of Southern African-Americans. Odum and Johnson present lyrics divided by category, including ‘blues’, ‘chain gang’, ‘bad man ballads’, ‘minstrel’ and...
£175
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PARETO, Vilfredo.
Le mythe vertuïste et la littérature immorale. [Librairie des sciences politiques et sociales].
Paris, Rivière, 1911.
First edition. Pareto observes that all social movements which have had any impact on history have been upheld by a faith, so their success has been guaranteed by the intensity of myth as opposed to logical reasoning. Le Mythe is important not only because it summarizes Pareto’s earlier works,...
£150
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PARK,
Robert Ezra and Herbert Adolphus MILLER [and William Isaac THOMAS]. Old world traits transplanted. [Americanization Studies].
New York and London, Harper, [n.d., copyright 1921].
First edition. A still-pertinent study of European and North American (Mexican) immigrants to the United States, and of ideas of heritage, with case studies of New York. Apparently far more sympathetic than Le Bon. Donald Young’s introduction to the 1975 Patterson Smith reprint edition explains how...
£100
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PATTEN, Simon Nelson.
The new basis of civilization. [American Social Progress Series. The Kennedy lectures for 1905, in the School...
New York and London, Macmillan, 1907.
First edition, rare in commerce. A study of contemporary society in America, including the pervading problem of poverty and inequality despite the massive wealth generated by industry.
£125
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PAVLOV, Ivan Petrovich.
ANREP, and G. V., translator. Conditioned reflexes, an investigation of the psychological activity of the...
Oxford, Milford for the University Press, 1927.
First edition in English. Pavlov’s account of his famous experiments on dogs of the 1890s and early 1900s, which earned him a Nobel Prize in 1904.
£100
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POWELL, John W.
Outlines of sociology. [Presidential Address to the Anthropological Society of Washington, D.C., February 7 1882.
[Washington], From the Transactions of the Society, 1882.
First edition thus, rare offprint. This lecture really is just a basic outline of sociology. Powell is known as the first non-Native American to explore the Grand Canyon. He was later the first director of the Bureau of Ethnology at the Smithsonian Institution during his service as director of the U.S....
£150
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RATZENHOFER, Gustav.
Soziologie. Positive lehre von den menschlichen Wechselbeziehungen.
Leipzig, Brockhaus, 1907.
First edition. Ratzenhofer, the watchmaker-turned-philosopher, attempted to explain all the laws of human coexistence by scientific methods, as outlined in this work, in which noble aim he was preceded by Auguste Comte, and anticipates Talcott Parsons.
£125
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WAYLAND, Francis.
The Elements of political economy.
New York, Leavitt, Lord & Company, 1837.
First edition of an important work long held as the leading principal economics text in American colleges. Wayland (1796-1865) was for twenty-eight years president of Brown University. ‘His notions of political economy and philanthropy dictated that the most important obligations of the state were...
£500
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ROSCHER, William.
Principles of political economy …
New York, Holt, 1878.
First English edition, published simultaneously in Chicago and New York, of Roscher’s main work, originally published in 1854. This edition translated from the thirteenth German edition: this was ‘perhaps the most widely-read textbook of economics in Germany in the second half of the nineteenth century’...
£375
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MITCHELL, Wesley Clair.
A history of the greenbacks with special reference to the economic consequences of their issue: 1862-65....
Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 1903.
First edition. A famous study of the Union’s attempts to prevent inflation after issuing the first paper money in the United States that operated as legal tender for bullion, called ‘demand notes’ or ‘greenbacks’ (since they were printed in green on the back), by keeping down the price...
£275
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RIBOT, Théodule.
La psychologie Allemande contemporaine. [École Expérimentale].
Paris, Baillière, 1879.
First edition, a nice association. The ‘new’ Germany psychology was scientific and empirical, relying solely on observation of physical phenomena. Ribot’s work was published in the same year as the establishment of Wilhelm Wundt’s psychological laboratory in Leipzig; he was delighted with the...
£175
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RIBOT, Théodule.
The diseases of personality. Authorised translation.
Chicago, Open Court Publishing Company, 1891.
First separate edition in English; there appears to have been an earlier appearance with other of Ribot’s Diseases; first published in French in 1885. A study of mental illnesses including double personality (‘double monsters’, and twins), insanity, sexual characteristics such as ‘opposite...
£125
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ROBINSON, Joan.
Collected economic papers.
New York, Kelley, 1951.
First American edition, published the same year as the Blackwell’s Oxford edition; the first part of a larger series, which ran until 1980. This volume contains papers on hoarding, hyper-inflation, population decline, and ‘Marx and Keynes’. Certain of these subjects no doubt contributed to Robinson’s...
£100