Crime and Punishment mind. Dostoevsky's letter to Katkov reveals his immediate inspiration, to which he remained faithful even after his original plan evolved into a much more ambitious creation: a desire to counteract what he regarded as nefarious consequences arising from the doctrines of Russian nihilism. In the novel, Dostoevsky pinpointed the dangers of both utilitarianism and rationalism, the main ideas of which inspired the radicals, continuing a fierce criticism he had already started with his "Notes from Underground". Dostoevsky utilized the characters, dialogue and narrative in "Crime and Punishment" to articulate an argument against westernizing ideas. He thus attacked a peculiar Russian
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