McGraw-Hill/Irwin To Publish 15th Edition of the Most Successful Business College Textbook in History

Business Wire, May 9, 2001

Business Editors

NEW YORK--(BUSINESS WIRE)--May 9, 2001

By Changing with the Times, McConnell and Brue's

Economics Continues to Outsell Competitors

Since McGraw-Hill/Irwin published the first edition of Economics in 1960, 12 million students have learned economic principles from McConnell and Brue - a staggering number, equal to the combined population of Kansas, Nebraska, South Dakota, Wyoming, Colorado and Iowa. In fact, more students have studied economics with McConnell and Brue than any other textbook. The 14th edition sold over 400,000 copies in the US alone, outselling its closest competitor by a margin of two-to-one.

How does a book manage to enjoy such staying power over so many decades? "By changing with the times, but not getting too far ahead of the pack. It's a delicate balance," says Lucille Sutton, executive editor of McConnell and Brue for the past three editions. According to Sutton, the authors maintain success by continually updating and improving chapters to keep pace with both shifts in pedagogy and the ever-changing economic landscape. Each edition reflects mainstream economic thinking and offers a balanced approach to economic ideas and concepts.

Textbook publishing has changed greatly in the past few decades, and a large challenge faced by the authors and editors this time around involved figuring out how new technology - websites, computer tutorials, and the like - fit with the tried-and-true world of printed books. In addition to the traditional study guide and instructor manual, the 15th edition of the book, due out this July, includes a website, tutorial software and graphing Java applets. The book also contains "Web Buttons," icons that refer students to the book website for additional materials.

"The goal is to make the electronic supplements build on the text in a meaningful way," says Sutton, adding, "too many textbook websites don't relate directly to the book. Or worse, they just reprint the text online without adding any interactive features. That's really of no value since reading something on a screen doesn't improve learning. But with our site we identified areas such as graphing and quizzing where presenting topics electronically could really expand student understanding. And that's where we concentrated our efforts."

So far it's an approach welcomed by many college instructors. "One of the general education goals of our school is to infuse computer literacy and information literacy into the curriculum whenever appropriate. With many texts the instructor has to think of ways to accomplish this goal. McConnell's Web-based questions provide a solution to this problem," said Paul Harris of Camden County College in New Jersey.

McGraw-Hill/Irwin is the higher education business publishing unit of McGraw-Hill Education, a division of The McGraw-Hill Companies (NYSE: MHP), a global information services provider in the financial services, education and business markets through leading brands such as Standard & Poor's and Business Week. Founded in 1888, the corporation has more than 300 offices in 33 countries. Sales in 2000 were $4.3 billion. Additional information is available at www.mcgraw-hill.com.