How curious--could you explain? If one doesn't know anything about a subject, what would be a better introduction than a well written textbook? In my earlier attempts to acquire the knowledge one gains in college on my and for free, I would audit classes, listen to lectures, and buy and read textbooks to try to engage myself with material. (This happened before I realized that the point of college was paying for a degree which serves as proxy of my intelligence and socialization, which frustrated my attempts to be informed only a lot.) What should I have done differently than buy a textbook?
Textbooks are written by a committee to appease elected school board members and educational committees to be sold to students that have no choice and zero unmotivated interest in the subject. It is perfectly reasonable to find a textbook about biology with no chapter about evolution because Texas won't buy it if it has one. College textbooks aren't much better - they are a catch-all overview of a subject as described to eliminate all controversy whose narrative is sculpted in such a way that retention of key facts and figures can be interrogated at regular intervals for the purposes of easy grading. There is nothing readable about a textbook. There is nothing in a textbook that will draw you in - to the contrary, a textbook is designed to shove an arbitrary, selected-by-committee period down the throats of people who have no choice but to read it in the amount of time allotted by another group of professionals that don't give the first fuck about the material or its importance. A nonfiction book, on the other hand, is one author's exploration of a subject following her narrative and what she thinks is important, using her voice to explain and elaborate on facts that you might otherwise find uninteresting. Here, check it: That's the opening paragraph of Barbara Tuchman's The Guns of August, a book about WWI and its causes. If that shit doesn't give you frisson, if it doesn't get marshal music playing in your head, if it doesn't make the Game of Goddamn Thrones leap to the forefront of your imagination you're dead inside. It sure as fuck makes you want to keep reading. Compare and contrast: There aren't a lot of college courses that cover WWI explicitly. AP World History classes give it a chapter. Lewis & Clark College, a decidedly liberal arts place, uses The Oxford Illustrated History of the First World War. The most popular AP book appears to be World Civilizations: The Global Experience. Neither book so much as mentions Edward VII.“So gorgeous was the spectacle on the May morning of 1910 when nine kings rode in the funeral of Edward VII of England that the crowd, waiting in hushed and black-clad awe, could not keep back gasps of admiration. In scarlet and green and blue and purple, three by three the sovereigns rode through the palace gates, with plumed helmets, gold braid, crimson sashes, and jeweled orders flashing in the sun. After them came five heirs apparent, forty more imperial or royal highnesses, seven queens – four dowager and three regnant – and a scattering of special ambassadors from uncrowned countries. Together they represented seventy nations in the greatest assemblage of royalty and rank ever gathered in one place and, of its kind, the last. The muffled tongue of Big Ben tolled nine by the clock as the cortege left the palace, but on history’s clock it was sunset, and the sun of the old world was setting in a dying blaze of splendor never to be seen again."
So a textbook is useful to the extent that it helps its reader pass a class or a test. Whereas a (non-fiction) book is useful to the extent that its author manages to convey his or her reasons for setting out to write the book in the first place; for conveying what they found interesting or remarkable, not (as determined by the bevy of textbook publishers) what's gonna be on a test. I agree. I think that I took a slightly incredulous tack earlier because I imagine a chemistry, or even a psychology, textbook to be prima facie and less controversially useful, more than a textbook on history could be, although it is history that this entire post is concerned with. Thank you for the insight. And like I said, I am an abiding fan of non-fiction. Already on page 87 of Destiny Disrupted.
Textbooks are didactic. Non-fiction is autodidactic. This is by design: "what math do I need in order to understand physics?" is an externally-guided search. It also holds true for liberal arts: "What songs should I listen to in order to understand the influence of music on American culture?" is not a question you can solve yourself without a whole bunch of research and exploration. However, "what are the cool parts of physics?" becomes an autodidactic search because "cool" is a controversial qualifier. Likewise, "I want to know more about Bruce Springsteen" is not a quest that should be informed by committee. This is an autodidactic discussion. "I'm interested in exploring my historical blind spots" is not something that should be answered with textbooks. It's like suggesting someone learn more about the events that led to September 11 by reading this thing.