Textbooks are a rather bad source of info. Consider that history textbooks in many countries look at everything through the lens of a particular national mythol

Textbooks are a rather bad source of info. Consider that history textbooks in many countries look at everything through the lens of a particular national mythology, since one of the goals of a country’s public education is to forge a cohesive society, and that is done by downplaying past controversies. For many other fields, introductory textbooks even at the university level may abound in oversimplifications, and it is only in later years of study that one begins, by reading specialized papers and monographs, to grasp how complicated the facts really are.