This has been an ongoing problem since the beginning of Google Books. But I’ve never seen anyone else complain about it. This image says it all:
Click = big
That’s the final page of results. Sort By Date should go from latest to earliest date (there’s no sort order option, either!). And it clearly doesn’t. How hard can such a basic function be?
Mike Cane’s xBlog 
I’ve noticed and been perplexed by that too. Perhaps the date that is sorted is not the publication date, but some other date. I confess I can’t imagine what would be more useful than the publication date, but it’s a thought. It might also be that the metadata is just wrong. You’ve seen that before, so I assume you checked. Correct?
You see the date field in each entry? Don’t use metadata as an excuse when there’s that field to sort on!
Sorry, I didn’t see that. I was reading on my iPhone, and it escaped my notice since it was a wee bit small. I hereby retract.
You must use pinch-zoom more! Hahaha
Earliest copyright date would be a nice field to sort by. Then reprints wouldn’t show up out of order.