An aside: Is it just me or are the typical graphics heavy books not nearly as good as the publishers and teachers think they are? It looks like they did a lot of research about how to best layout and setup a course in a book but the result is like a very sterile guide that pushes education down your throat. All the side notes reiterating facts. I much prefer Wikipedia's "state it and leave it" style approach. If something strikes you as important you've already pulled it out in your mind without having the publisher to highlight it in a bubble with graphics.
It looks like they did a lot of research about how to best layout and setup a course in a book
It looks to me like they try to cram as much stuff-that-looks-like-content in as possible so they can justify charging $100+ for the book. The disease is particularly bad at the first-year level where the publishers need to compete against dozens of other damn-near-identical textbooks; this is why every first-year physics textbook I know weighs half a ton and has lots of pretty pictures, whereas the actual content could probably be whittled down to a hundred pages or so.
