Economics
Rare first editions, signed and inscribed copies, deluxe and collectible editions of books, pamphlets, and ephemera relating to economics.
CHURCHILL, Winston S. The People's Rights.London : [1910]
First edition, wrappers issue, the rare The Daily News variant. Due to the low quality of the materials and the cheap and clumsy method of production, the book is among the most difficult to acquire for Churchill collectors: Langworth declares it "the third rarest Churchill book after Mr. Brodrick's Army and For Free Trade" (p....Learn More
HUME, David. Essays and Treatises on Several Subjects.London : 1777
The definitive edition, incorporating Hume's final corrections - submitted a fortnight before his death - and including the first appearance of the essay, "Of the Origin of Government."
Hume revised the Essays and Treatises for over two decades following its first publication in 1753. A capacious work, it collects Hume's major writings on...Learn More
QALAJI, Mahmoud. Al-Tharwah al-bitrūliya fī al-khalīj al-'arabī.Beirut : 1964
First edition, inscribed by the author in Arabic to the management of the National Commercial Bank of Saudi Arabia in Beirut, of this well-illustrated work entirely devoted to oil wealth and the oil industry in GCC countries, where oil reserves at the time were "sufficient unto the whole world for 36 years".
An initial historical overview...Learn More
ORWELL, George. The Road to Wigan Pier.London : 1937
First edition, first impression, of Orwell's classic study of poverty in the north of England. It has since become firmly established among Orwell's best-known and most articulate non-fiction works.
The book was issued to members of Victor Gollancz's Left Book Club as the choice for March 1937, ensuring a large edition. Although Gollancz...Learn More
HAYEK, Friedrich August von. The Road to Serfdom.London : 1944
First edition, in the dust jacket, which was printed on flimsy wartime paper and rarely survives.
Hayek's classic polemic against centralization and collectivism is among the most influential and popular expositions of classical liberalism and libertarianism ever published and "far and away the most eloquent and straightforward statement of...Learn More
ARAMCO. Middle East Oil Development: 4th Edition.[Dhahran] : 1956
The 1956 iteration of this report on the oil trade in the Gulf, first issued as Summary of Middle East Oil Developments in 1947. This edition was published shortly before Suez Crisis and the formation of OPEC, reflecting a time of great change in the industry.
"During the past ten years the Middle East's oil has practically replaced the...Learn More
UNITED ARAB EMIRATES. Dawlat al-Imārāt al-'arabīah al-mutahidah. Al-kitāb al-sanawī.[Hazmieh : 1977]
First edition of this well-illustrated pamphlet summarizing the most important achievements of the UAE government in the year 1977. We have traced no institutional copies outside the UAE, where only one appears to be recorded.
The sections address issues ranging from the question of Palestine, Cyprus, and the Comoro Islands to the UAE's...Learn More
GULF WAR. Tadmīr abār al-naft fī al-wathāi'q al-'irāqīah al-'adrār al-bi'īah wa-l-iqtisādīah wa-l-juhūd al-kūwaītīah fī al-muhāfazhah 'ala al-tharūah al-naftīah.Kuwait : 1995
First edition of this well-illustrated study on the environmental impact of the destruction of oil wells in Kuwait, based on government documents issued by the Iraqi government during the Gulf War.
The work presents this damage, substantiated by copious data, as a main goal of the Iraqi war strategy of delayed sabotage. An appendix lists...Learn More
MISES, Ludwig von. Profit and Loss.South Holland, IL : 1951
First edition. Profit and Loss prints the paper which Mises presented at the Mont Pèlerin meeting in 1951; it was later published in the collected essays Planning for Freedom the following year.
"It is an awkward thing to deal in a monograph with one particular aspect of the operation of the market economy. The market is an indivisible...Learn More
DOTY, Elihu. Anglo-Chinese Manual with Romanized Colloquial in the Amoy Dialect.Canton : 1853
First edition of this reference for foreign traders and officials, this copy used in house at the British firm Tait and Co., which was established in Amoy (Xiamen) in 1846 and exported tea and other commodities.
Divided into thematic sections, the manual gives words and phrases in English, Chinese, and the romanized colloquial. In its...Learn More
COMBRUNE, Michael. An Enquiry into the Prices of Wheat, Malt, and occasionally of Other Provisions, of Land and Cattle, &c.London : 1768
First edition of this compendium of English historical food prices. Adam Smith had a copy in his library. A Dublin edition was published in 1769. Combrune (died 1773) was a pioneering brewer who introduced scientific methods to the craft, and in 1758 published a history of brewing.Learn More
THÜNEN, Johann Heinrich von. Von Thünen's Isolated State.Oxford : 1966
First edition of this English translation of the economist's magnum opus. Der isolirte Staat (1826) is recognized as a fundamental economic study concerning the location of agriculture. "Among geographers and location theorists, Thünen is a founding god" (Samuelson, p. 1468). A partial English translation was published in 1960, but Wartenberg's...Learn More
WICKSELL, Knut. Selected Papers on Economic Theory.Cambridge, Massachusetts : 1958
First edition of this collection of Wicksell's papers, presenting "a selection of articles, mostly published in the Swedish Ekonomisk Tidskrift during the first quarter of this century, and hitherto not available to the English-speaking public" (p. 5). It was published in the UK simultaneously.Learn More
MERRYWEATHER, Mary. Experience of Factory Life.London : 1862
Earliest obtainable edition. In 1850 Merryweather started a day nursery and night school for women working at Courtauld's silk factory. The pamphlet was written at the request of Bessie Rayner Parkes to expound the benefits of female education within the workplace. Although this is the stated third edition, we have traced no recorded copies of a...Learn More
GREENE, William Batchelder. Equality.West Brookfield, Massachusetts : 1849
First edition of this proto-utopian tract. A fusion of Christianity and radical economics, it expounds the Unitarian minister's mutualist theories of value, property, and credit to form a distinctly American anti-capitalist theory of political economy.
Rooted in Christian ethics and the belief that all are equal under natural law, Greene...Learn More
BODICHON, Barbara Leigh Smith. Women and Work.London : 1857
First edition in pamphlet form, in which the feminist and suffragist argues for women's equal rights to education, employment opportunities, and financial independence: "One great corresponding cry rises from a suffering multitude of women, saying 'We want work'" (p. 6). It first appeared in the feminist periodical, the Waverley Journal, in the...Learn More
ELLIS, William. The Timber-Tree Improved: or, the Best Practical Methods of Improving Different Lands with Proper Timber.London : 1742
A later edition of this popular agricultural tract, the third in four years. Ellis was a well-respected authority, and farmers from all around the country invited him to visit and advise on their holdings. He here discusses trees including oak, beech, elm, ash, and cherry.
"A shrewd man of business", Ellis (d. 1758) was commissioned by...Learn More
POPPER, Karl. In Search of a Better World: Lectures and Essays from Thirty Years.,London and New York : 1992
First edition, presentation copy, inscribed on the front free endpaper to Popper's friend, the philosophical broadcaster Bryan Magee, "For Bryan from Karl, 12-8-94". This copy is among the last books inscribed by Popper, who died five weeks later.
By the 1990s, Popper and Magee (1930-2019) had spent over two decades as friends and close...Learn More
MONTMORT, Pierre Rémont de; Nicholas Bernoulli; Johann Bernoulli. Essay d'analyse sur les jeux de hazard. Seconde Edition. Revise & augmentée de plusieurs Lettres.Paris : 1713
Second, revised edition of the pioneering study of games of chance, among the first comprehensive studies of probability theory. This edition is the first to publish seven extensive letters from Nicholas and Johann Bernoulli on probability, covering 69 pages in total.
Pierre Rémont de Montmort (1678-1719) devoted his life to resolving the...Learn More
MACKAY, Charles. Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds.London and New York : 1870s
A very good copy of this important early work on popular delusions of all types. Charles Mackay's book, still in print, considers the credulous enthusiasm of mankind for phenomena such as alchemy, witchcraft, relics, the Crusades, urban myths, as well as economic events such as the tulip bubble, the Mississippi Bubble, and the South Sea...Learn More
