Differential Equations (Agnew, 1960)

Among my many, many other books is a red hardcover textbook entitled, simply and accurately, Differential Equations, by Ralph Palmer Agnew. It was first published in 1942; the second edition, which is the one I own, was printed in 1960.

It does not, I should emphasize, appear to be the copy of that edition that has gone missing from the National Library of Australia.

I obtained it, not from a bookseller, but from a furniture store — probably sometime in the mid-1990s: while my parents were shopping for, I think, a new couch, I entertained myself with a book; and, as they did end up making their purchase there, the salesman was kind enough to throw it in when I asked after it.

It is, strangely, the oldest book I own. Anyone who knows me reasonably well would probably expect me to own much older books than this, but if I do I can't find them anywhere. (I do have a number of Edgar Rice Burroughs novels in storage, but the oldest are the the 1973 Ballantine editions of the Barsoom series, with cover art by Gino D'Achille.)

It has a peculiar sense of humor: dry, self-aware, but detached and unintrusive. I never did finish it. (Nor did I ever grok diffy-Qs as well as I felt I ought, even when I studied them formally in college; but that's neither here nor there.)