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I just stumbled across my vintage palmistry book How to Know People by Their Hands, which I'd always thought was by Cheiro (William John Warner) but turns out to be by Josef Ranald.

The book was published by Modern Age Books, New York, in 1938. It has the interesting addition of specially treated pages at the back for readers to imprint their own handprints on and send them to the author for analysis by mail. (Offer long expired by now, I'm sure!) I've also just noticed that my copy is in fact autographed, which is nice, and makes up for the lack of dust jacket.

Googling "Josef Ranald" shows that he wrote about graphology as well as palmistry, but there doesn't seem to be much information available. He seems to have been fairly well known at the time, judging by his collection of famous people's handprints, and I'm wondering if anyone knows anything about him.

I don't know anything about the author, but what a great find. I've got a bit of a thing for old books like that, can spend hours in second hand bookshops. The cooking section is the one that really gets me, I love reading through old recipes and seeing how things have changed over the years.