Woodworking for Industry Book

What can I add to 7000+ reviews (at the time I write)? I think this book is fascinating because of all the topic it covers. Like the OJ trial, it is about many important interconnected things and those things remain important today, even though this book was originally published in 1865.

Sure, it has a lot about crime and punishment. But also insanity and temporary insanity, the latter a legal plea that could be entered in Russia of the mid-1800's. It's about guilt and conscience, long before Freud. In fact, this book was written at a time when psychological theories were coming into vogue. It's about false confessions. It's about poverty and social class and people who rise above their class and people who fall from the class they were born into. It's about the wild dreams and the follies of youth.

There is also mention of many social theories that were in vogue at that time, so, for example, if you want to, you can click on Wikipedia to find out about "Fourier's system" and his phalansteres. There is attempted rape, blackmail, child labor, child prostitution, child marriage and child molestation. There is discussion of marrying for money. There are ethnic tensions between Russians and the Germans of St. Petersburg. Should you give to charity or should you give to change the conditions that caused the poverty? Like me, you may have thought that was a modern idea, but here it is, laid out in 1865. There's a lot about alcoholism. Stir in a cat-and-mouse detective and a bit of Christian redemption. No wonder this is a classic.