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> It's like someone took their personal notes, formatted them in a pdf and called them a book.

Why is that such a bad thing? I like condensed, reader's digests versions of things. Not every text has to break new ground; some of it can be, well, purely educational.

Or do you dispute the educational value of the text?

Legitimately curious; I haven't read any of the books, but I actually like the way you described the author's text process.

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I agree - "new material" is actually a concern in the context of a text book. I feel that synthesizing and presenting a coherent view of the communities best practice is a very valuable thing.

I think (but am very open to correction) that this is now a very hard thing for academics to do - the incentive for writing a text book is very low because they are not esteemed or counted as research? Writing a book like this is very hard.

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