The book studies the origins and evolution of economic textbooks in the nineteenth and early twentieth century, up to the turning point represented by Paul Samuelson’s Economics (1948), which became the template for all the textbooks of the postwar period. The case studies included in the book cover a large part of Europe, the British Commonwealth, the United States and Japan. Each chapter examines various types of textbooks, from those aimed at self-education to those addressed to university students, secondary school students, to the short manuals aimed at the popularisation of political economy among workers and the middle classes. An introductory chapter examines this phenomenon in a comparative and transnational perspective.

This book discusses the history of economic theories, drawing largely from periodical literature, which is often hard to obtain. The book is divided into sections along linguistic lines (German, Romance and English speaking countries).

The rise to dominance of marginalist economics coincided with a major increase in the spread of socialist ideas. As many socialist and Marxist thinkers were preocuppied with economic questions this was scarcely a development that could be ignored. Socialists either had to defend Marxist economics against marginalist criticism or show that socialism and marginalism were compatible. This volume explores the varied socialist responses in a number of major European countries including Italy, France, Russia and German speaking countries.

Vols. 1-22 include the section "Recent publications upon economics".