Textbooks, Free Textbooks.

NP: Stone Roses -- This is the One

People not in the academy or the publishing industry do not understand what goes into the adoption of a particular given textbook. Unless you wrote the son of a bitch, or one of your good friends/former professors/advisors did, you have absolutely no reason to choose a book over another. No one is seriously going to read five 600 page books before every semester to choose which textbook fits their style or gets the narrative just right. Instead, the publishers will set up "book fairs" twice a year where they trot out their wares and display them in a low-pressure sales environment. Since each company publishes at least 4 US History text books each, there is actually a lot of choice I guess.

There are three important parts of the book fair process.
1. Free Books. Since there are so many books, they don't expect you to make a choice right then, so they offer the books to you for free! Yes, you too can get free copies of the latest in educational material just for showing up and lying and telling the folks that you may or may not be teaching a class the following semester. Most poor graduate students, like myself, will load the hell up with up to a dozen books (one girl I know gets way more than that) and then proceed to go to Gator Textbooks or Facultybooks.com and unload them for a handsome profit. For the better part of two years, this was the only reason I showed up to book fairs, and I have the books (that Dewayne and Dobie wouldn't buy) in my locker bin to prove it.

2. Free Food. Yes, you have to have a reason to make it to the book fair, so they will cater you a lunch while you look over the latest collection of textbooks and other course materials. The usual choice is the Atlanta Bread Company or the Panera Bread Company. One woman showed up last year with Publix sandwiches and I swear the department adopted books from every company BUT hers. The best free book people will show up with a cooler with Coke products. Those that don't care usually come with warm cans of Publix soda.....again not a wise choice.

3. Book Hoes. Operating on Bob Barker's third rule of salesmanship, the textbook companies believe that you have to have an attractive, young, sales girl there to take your order and hype the latest edition of the American Experiment or Modern Problems in the American South. Of course, since a disproportionate number of graduate students are single and quite the losers, this pays off on many occasions. I, myself, have come under the spell of a particular book hoe based out of Central Florida and I am going to regret it all semester. See the above story for more information.

So there you have it. Your professor likely doesn't care about the sentence structure or the CD filled with maps and primary documents that came with it. Chances are, the book hoe that works for the publishing company brought a better brand of sandwich, or chose potato salad instead of cole slaw as the side item, the last time she came to campus. And really, you thought education was a principled business.