Source Texts
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Text 1
Thomas Piketty’s book Capital in the Twenty-First Century has a more rigorous structure than its sequel, Capital and Ideology. While the first book’s chapters all contribute to bolstering a clear, coherent argument about income inequality, the second book’s digressions on subjects such as the history of vegetarian diets in India do not just make the book tedious but also muddy its reasoning.
Text 2
Capital and Ideology has different aims than Piketty’s earlier books. It should be judged not just in the context of Piketty’s previous work but placed next to books like Robert Burton’s Anatomy of Melancholy, in which the stated theme of the varieties of melancholy is mainly an excuse for a polymath to map his own mind. Even when sections do not explicitly support the central thesis, they link to each other in intriguing ways. None of them should be considered extraneous.
Thomas Piketty’s book Capital in the Twenty-First Century has a more rigorous structure than its sequel, Capital and Ideology. While the first book’s chapters all contribute to bolstering a clear, coherent argument about income inequality, the second book’s digressions on subjects such as the history of vegetarian diets in India do not just make the book tedious but also muddy its reasoning.
Text 2
Capital and Ideology has different aims than Piketty’s earlier books. It should be judged not just in the context of Piketty’s previous work but placed next to books like Robert Burton’s Anatomy of Melancholy, in which the stated theme of the varieties of melancholy is mainly an excuse for a polymath to map his own mind. Even when sections do not explicitly support the central thesis, they link to each other in intriguing ways. None of them should be considered extraneous.