Oxford UP textbooks always smelled like this, Atkins in particular

I know; sorry, I couldn't resist :D

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.

> For instance:

Those weren't in any of my Caltech textbooks.

You clearly had good textbooks - or is more that your textbooks were American? All the textbooks I have had owned have been British ones, and since curriculums usually differ across countries or even institutions maybe there is no overlap between the publishers operating in the USA and UK?