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 opinions on the causes and prevention of crime." Nevertheless, she concluded that the book "...will be useful to anyone who wishes to have access, in one volume, to most of the important criminological studies of the past 50 years." "Crime and Human Nature" was called "the most important book on crime to appear in a decade" by John Monahan in 1986. Also in 1986, Michael Nietzel and Richard Milich wrote of the book that "Seldom does a book written by two academicians generate the interest and spark the debate that this one has," noting that by February 1986, it had