Making Textbooks Worthwhile

By LEON FINK

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...