Oskar Morgenstern’s Review of Economics: A General Textbook for Students, by Frederic Benham (1939)

Oskar Morgenstern’s book review evaluates Benham’s textbook as an unusually balanced and lucid introduction to economics. His favorable judgment rests on its comprehensive coverage, its accessible presentation of recent theoretical developments, and its willingness to acknowledge the uneven achievements of economic analysis. The review moves from an outline of the textbook through assessments of particular topics to a broader argument about teaching: beginners need both a coherent grounding in theory and an awareness of its unresolved problems.

Benham’s five books address demand, production, the capitalist price system, money and banking, and international trade. Morgenstern describes a progression from individual behavior to international trade and finance, with the first three books constituting a substantial treatment of economic theory in the narrower sense. He connects the quality of the exposition with Benham’s standing as a teacher and his previous work on money and international trade. The textbook’s principal achievement, however, is not merely breadth but the evenness with which it handles its subjects.

Special mention should be made of the full treatment of production which contains an excellent synthesis of the many results which were obtained from the discussions carried on during the last twenty years in many periodicals.

This praise identifies synthesis as a central task of introductory teaching: the textbook makes a dispersed body of theoretical debate available in a coherent account. Morgenstern also commends its treatment of value and demand, particularly its simple explanation of indifference curves. An elementary text can thus introduce an advanced analytical method without sacrificing intelligibility. His standard is accessibility with substance, rather than the avoidance of difficult concepts.

The account of income receives a more qualified assessment. Wages, rent, interest, and marginal productivity are treated with considerable attention, but Morgenstern finds no notable attempt to broaden the theory of income as a whole. He nevertheless recognizes that the subject is controversial and that an introductory textbook may reasonably limit its engagement with unsettled questions. This reservation leads into the review’s strongest pedagogical claim: restraint about unresolved theory should not become a misleading appearance of completeness.

It is no doubt one of the sources of the intolerable dulness of most textbooks that they present everything as in wonderfully good order, while even the beginner readily discovers the weak spots.

Benham’s repeated acknowledgment that economic analysis has not been equally successful across its problems is therefore a positive intellectual feature, not a defect. Morgenstern would carry that candor still further. Making the limits of knowledge visible is more scientific, stimulates curiosity, and encourages modesty among readers inclined to mistake provisional opinions for established findings. The review treats honesty about uncertainty as compatible with—and necessary to—clear instruction.

Balance also governs Morgenstern’s assessment of competition and monopoly. He contrasts Benham’s allocation of attention with that of otherwise excellent recent books that overemphasize monopolistic competition. His objection concerns its relative prominence in an introductory curriculum, rather than its inclusion.

One of the principal aims of teaching theory should be to avoid barren specialization at too early a stage.

This sentence makes explicit the educational principle underlying the review’s praise of breadth and proportion. Students should encounter the range of important economic questions before concentrating too narrowly on a fashionable field. Morgenstern closes by noting that risk and profit could receive fuller treatment, while still ranking Benham’s book among the best then available. Its lucid, lively exposition recommends it both to teachers and to independent learners. The review’s enduring interest lies in this evaluative standard: a strong textbook should organize theoretical knowledge, preserve proportion among subjects, and cultivate judgment without disguising the discipline’s unfinished work.