Werner Sombart.
 
Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1967. Octavo. Lavender cloth boards with matching pictorial dust wrapper. 200 pages. First American edition. Quite scarce in this condition. Near fine. 
 
Sombart's work, once a dominant force in European social sciences, fell out of favor due to controversy surrounding his involvement with and sympathy for Nazism. In the end, one can pull anti-Semitic and anti-Nazi excerpts from his work, and as it turned out, the Nazis suppressed his books. Whatever your position on his political affiliations, he was lauded by the likes of Friedrich Engels, Max Weber, and Carl Schmitt for good reason. It's time we all give Sombart a second look. A seminal work on one of the more mysterious, pervasive, and seductive elements of capitalism, also a significant association copy, a book on luxury as luxury object.    
 
"Luxury, then, itself a legitimate child of illicit love—as we have seen—gave birth to capitalism."