News of the death of Paul Samuelson, at 94, sent me to my bookshelves. There's a beaten-up copy of Foundations of Economic Analysis there (a free download can be found here). Paging through it caused me the odd experience of not recognizing the book at all – did I in fact read it? – and yet finding the material not only familiar but a sort of deep grammar of thought, neoclassically-trained as I am.

When a student I didn't actually use the Samuelson textbook, Economics, whose latest incarnation is written by William Nordhaus. I note, though, that the cover is a definite selling point. It has the fantastic map of the location of economic activity on the planet from Nordhaus's economic geography website – if you've never looked at this, I urge you to do so.