I'm sure it was the VOC's in the glue.
In all seriousness though, there is a lot about textbook publishing that is inexplicably different from other non-fiction books. For instance:
- Why not use the conventional paperback size if the textbook is not reliant on large diagrams? Why do textbooks always have to be massive?
- Why are there so many 'infoboxes' and 'did you knows' and 'warnings' (a characteristic that textbooks share with do-it-yourself and self-help books)?
- Why do almost all textbooks start with lengthy 'How to Use This Book' chapters? If you're in a course, you should have already been told, and most of those seem pretty common-sense anyway.
My favourite business textbooks that mostly avoid these disadvantages (as I see them):
- Managing without Profit, Mike Hudson: an almost complete guide to the mechanics of non-profit organisations; perfect if you already have a good grasp of for-profit business fundamentals.
- A Manager's Guide to Self-Development, Mike Pedler, John Burgoyne and Tom Boydell: mostly tests in the same vein as Myers-Briggs, explaining various aspects of personality, behaviour and strategy.
- Interpersonal Skills at Work, Maureen Guirdham (not the John Hayes book of the same name!): very academic look at the social dynamics of workplaces, with proper citations to actual studies for further reading; very thought-provoking and genuinely useful if applied carefully.
Those weren't in any of my Caltech textbooks.