Mathematical Economics by Kelvin Lancaster. Macmillan, New York, 1968.

The burgeoning of abstract economic analysis since about 1950 makes the need for well-conceived consolidations and codifications at the textbook level peculiarly important. The task is a challenging one, demanding the attainment of a compromise between the “mathematics for economists” catalogues of techniques and the highly specialized and formalized “theorem-proof” sequences of the high-theory journals. It requires that skilful blend of the rigorous and the heuristic, the multidimensional and the diagrammatic, the logical and the intuitive, found in the teacher-born. Lancaster has succeeded admirably in finding the optimal mixture.