Both these books are amongst the earliest science fiction books I ever read.
The first book (in order of reading) is Andre Norton's 'The Last Planet', which is pretty much set in the same universe as much of her future history books - we have a Galactic Patrol, with Humans and Zacathans. It may be slightly different in that there used to be a Central Control that had more of an overreaching control than the Patrol in most of her space born tales. The basic premise is the same, however, Central Control is an ancient power that has lost much of its authority and there are civil wars breaking out all over. The crew of the Starfire were a remnant of the Patrol loyal to their old oaths, ordered out to seek out new worlds and... well, basically die in the doing. So when the ship came down too hard on a landing, she's pretty much written off so the crew split in two - regular Patrol, and the Rangers whose job it was to explore those new worlds they were supposed to be finding. The regular crew pretty much refused to admit the ship was finished but there's no denying the facts and they're all set to make camp in the wilderness until the lights from a mysterious city were spotted from over the horizon. Tasked to see what's going on, Ranger Sergeant Kartr and one of his squad make contact with the survivors of an earlier crashlanding and are invited to join them with, not precisely open arms.. A rebellion amongst the survivors sees Kartr's mind taken over by losing commander of the survivors and the next thing he remembers is being picked up by his team out in the wilderness. The patrol had basically beeen driven out of the city but had met up with a smaller group of survivors, bemmys all. Kartr had to hunt down the former leader before he could build up a new power base amongst the native population but a transferred disease breaks the belief of the natives in the godhood of the offworlders. Kartr and his group find themselves watching the natives as the congregate in front of a building that one of the other spacers swore was the spitting image of the Hall of Leave Taking, one of Humanity's oldest shrines. This was not a copy, however...
Rather against the usual for the period, the message of this book is that diveresity is good, and the best way to get along.
Alan E Nourse's 'A Man Obsessed is a more typical book about a man hunt but the hunter finds that the person being hunted was not the man he was after. This was a bit strange and I had to smile a bit at the descriptions of examining Jeff's mental state, and the electronic sorting machines that passed for computers when the book was written. I shouldn't really laugh too hard about the medical stuff - Nourse was a medic, turning to writing to help pay off his college fees ( )

I gave this (annoying) Ace double 4 stars, not so much as the stories are that good, but seeing this book brought back memories (good) of my youth (50/50). Norton's story is more appealing. I find the heavy handed anti-gov rhetoric of Nourse over the top. ( )