Economics: An Introductory Analysis

[Cambridge, Mass], 1946. Second preliminary edition (for private circulation only). [366] pp. 4to. Printed card wrappers. Contemporary annotations throughout. Second preliminary edition (for private circulation only)" [366] pp. 4to. A preliminary edition of a profoundly influential introductory textbook on Economics, authored by the first American to receive the Nobel Prize in Economics, Paul A. Samuelson (1915-2009). One of the most influential economists of the 20th century, Samuelson was a thirty-year-old wunderkind professor at MIT when he began work on the text at the request of his department chair, who was having difficulty engaging MIT juniors (truncated) in a compulsory two-semester Econ course. His intention was to write an introduction to economics which would appeal to a broad audience and which would not be bogged down in mathematics. The resulting textbook was adopted widely in American universities and would explain the basics of economics to generations of American college students, whose numbers increased by the millions in the post-war period thanks in part to initiatives like the G.I. bill. "Economics: An Introductory Analysis ... virtually swept the board in teaching economics in American colleges and universities ...The book dominated the rapidly growing maket for introductionary tetbooks to the extent that, at one point, it was claimed that all such books were clones of Samuelson" (Backhouse p xxi & 489). It has sold millions of copies since its initial publication, and has been translated into more than forty languages. The text was revised by Samuelson himself through the eleventh edition (1985).

The present copy represents the second preliminary edition, a much more polished but still unfinished version of the first preliminary "edition," which had been assembled from chapters duplicated and distributed to students in the MIT course as soon as Samuelson finished writing them. Labeled "for private circulation only" on the title page, the present version was in fact offered for sale in the MIT bookstore for use in the classroom beginning in the fall of 1948. It was this version that Samuelson circulated to colleagues at other universities and financial institutions, incorporating their feedback into revisions for what would be the first published edition, brought out by McGraw Hill in 1948. The book was published over the strong objections of several leading members of the American business community who felt that Samuelson was too critical of certain aspects of the American free enterprise system, and who opposed his deference to Keynsian economics. This copy includes contemporary pencil annotations throughout, evidently made by one of the students in the MIT economics course.

Unsurprisingly, few copies of this preliminary second edition seem to have survived; we trace only three institutional copies, and none in the trade as of this writing. We find only one copy of the first preliminary edition, in Samuelson's papers at Duke. Backhouse, Founder of Modern Economics: Paul A. Samuelson, Vol I (2017), p 489 ff, and p 509 ff (Inventory #: 309438)