The LSE Library is having a sale today of several thousand books it doesn’t want. Unfortunately, they keep almost anything of any value. All I could see was books like this inspirational study by George Kazakov. Even a hardened bibliophile would have a hard time loving these but there was a steady stream of would-be purchasers anyway.
I was stunned to discover that not only was this book mentioned in Google – 3 times – someone had actually referenced it in an academic journal! Truly no scholarship is entirely wasted.
So if you are in London, you read this, and you want to know more about Soviet peat in the 50s, dash on over to the LSE library – the sale is on until 16:00 and I have a feeling it may not have been snapped up yet…
P.S. In a strange quirk of fate the first academic publication I have been involved with was published today – details are available here. I hope it doesn’t meet a similar fate to Kazakov’s work – at least not during my lifetime…
Maybe fate has spoken. back in teh 50’s there was a growing interest in Peat as an alternate fuel source. You may not remember that 1970 was the first big pop in the price of oil that had americans lining up at the filling stations. It also sparked a speculative boom in peat mining companies in Canada and perhaps elsewhere. Dont know where they all went- probably down and disappeared in the 80’s. Might be the new (old) renewable resource.
Comment by Russ — 2 February 2006 @ 4:31 pm