Making Textbooks Worthwhile

For those of us who teach large introductory courses like the U.S.-history survey, at either the college or high-school level, the textbook is the 800-pound gorilla in the room. Virtually all of us use one, even as students judge them all "boring," and we regularly condemn them as vehicles of "passive" learning.

For the most part, however, the criticism has as much effect as protests about the weather. Textbooks are at once the biggest moneymakers for academic authors and the staple of

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