Crime and Punishment entitled "The Drunkards", which was to deal with "the present question of drunkenness ... [in] all its ramifications, especially the picture of a family and the bringing up of children in these circumstances, etc., etc." This theme, centering on the story of the Marmeladov family, became ancillary to the story of Raskolnikov and his crime. At the time Dostoevsky owed large sums of money to creditors, and was trying to help the family of his brother Mikhail, who had died in early 1864. After appeals elsewhere failed, Dostoevsky turned as a last resort to the publisher Mikhail Katkov, and sought
Crime and Human Nature of crime. Writing in "The New York Times", John Kaplan wrote in his review of "Crime and Human Nature" that "there is no doubt that this is an important book and will be the starting place for discussions of the subject for years to come." In a more mixed review of the book, Susan Jaco wrote that "The authors' point of view is buried amid so many tedious studies – many of which could just as easily be summed up in aphorisms like "the apple doesn't fall far from the tree" – that it is difficult to discern their real