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~.ThisWeek’s Citation Classic®_________SamuelsonP A. Economics. New York: McGraw-Hill, (1948) 1980. 861 p.

[MassachusettsInstitute of Technology,Cambridge,MA~

Economics has sold four million copies in 25 lan-guages. It set the pattern for postwar economicstextbooks. Both applauded and attacked in its ear-ly years for its Keynesian macroeconomics, itsdozen editions evolved eclectically withmainstream economics and helped define thechannels of that stream [The Science Citation In-dex® (SC!®) and the Social Sciences Citation Index

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(SSCI®) indicate that this book has been cited inover 1.040 publications since 1955.]

—

Paul A. SamuelsonDepartment of Economics

Massachusetts Institute of TechnologyCambridge, MA 02139

June ‘14, 1985

My 1948 introductory textbook, Econom-ics, was born under a lucky star. It soared upthe best-seller list immediately and broughtme fame and fortune. Surprisingly, throughmany editions and over nearly four decades,the book continues to command worldwideattention and has been translated and re-translated into some two dozen languages.

There is only one kind of fortune: bank-able dollars. But the kind of fame a textbookbrings a research scholar like me is quite dif-ferent from the fame we seek to earn fromour fellow-workers at the frontier of science.So to speak, Economics was a pure bonusquite unrelated to prizes, medals, and pro-fessional presidencies that go with the usualacademic territory.

My mail reflects the difference. Back in1967, my seventh edition preface

1carried

the lines:When the election of 1984 rolls around, andthe issues of the protective tariff and publicdebtare being seriously debated, all the hour,that the artists and editors and I have spent inmaking the pages as informative and authenticas possible will seem tome well spent if some-where a voter turns to the old book...for a re-reasoning of the economic principles involved.That is this author’s Walter Mitty dream ofglory. (p. vii)Well, 1984 did roll around and more than

one person wrote to say: “Yes, I did clarifythe issues by rereading Economics.” Thatdidn’t make my day; it made my year—my1984, not Orwell’s.

A college president who used to attendmy MIT classes went during his graduate

study to a summer program at the LondonSchool of Economics. His classmates were adiverse lot from all over the world. Thoughthey didn’t even share a common language,one thing he found they did share: most hadlearned their political economy fromSamuelson’s Economics—and he found hisego boosted when he could give definitiveinterpretations for the idiomswith which mybreezy pen had peppered the text. My egowas bolstered when I learned that portionsof my prose were used in language classesfor students hoping to become proficient inEnglish.

Imitation is indeed the sincerest form offlattery. One durable best-seller is known asthe poor man’s Samuelson, and a sizable pla-giarism suit against another work was dis-missed by the judge with the dictum:“..most of the textbooks are variants of Sam-uelson anyway.”

Not that it’s all been love. Back in thedays of Senator Joseph McCarthy, my bookwas denounced as dangerous Keynes-Marxradicalism. William Buckley, Jr., made hisfirst stab at fame by writing Cod and Man atYale.

2I hope his theology was more accurate

than his economics, but in any case suchcriticisms in the end built up the book’s useand sales. Displeasing Buckley though is notenough to please the left. A Danish four-vol-ume work, entitled simply Anti-Samuelson,denounced me as an arch-apologist forcapitalism.

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Polish, Russian, Hungarian, Chinese, andother translations have appeared in com-munist countries. The Russian edition soldout immediately and, like books on sex, isavailable in libraries only to a narrow circleof approved readers. A Harvard savantmade much fun of the translation’s gaps andbowdierizations. But, as I told my goodfriend the late Alexander Gerschenkron, hewas probably aiming his shafts of wit at themost intelligent of the Soviet specialists,who were able to import findings of Westernscience only by paying the price of ritualis-tic disclaimers.

In science and scholarship nothing is for-ever. But it is lots of fun—and well-paidwork—to write so that people will want tocite your work.

The book is now in its twelfth edition,4

butthis time under joint authorship withWilliam D. Nordhaus of Yale University.

I. S.uelsonPA. Economics. New York: McGraw-Hill. 1967.821 p.2. Buckk, W F. God and man a, Yale: the .n,persii:ionsof academic freedom. Chicsgo. IL: H. Regnery.1951. 240 p.3. Llnder M. Dec Anti-Samuelson. Erlangen: Yerlag Politladen. 1974. 4 volx.4. Semuelson P A & NoMb~u,W D. Economics. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1985. 960 p.

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