Looking back, I can think of one or two professionally-done textbooks I used that were really good. (The Campbell biology books in particular were stellar.)

Looking back, I can think of one or two professionally-done textbooks I used that were really good. (The Campbell biology books in particular were stellar.) The amount of work that must have gone in to their creation was enormous, and I am thankful for them. But there were not enough of them. For every worth-the-purchase, there were a dozen of middling to genuine crap quality, and every single one was painfully expensive. I genuinely feel for the good folks that I know are stuck in the system. But the current model can't die fast enough.