Flaws in my History Textbook

A couple weeks ago, I was reading my history textbook for class, when I came upon a startling, although not altogether surprising paragraph.  The chapter was about demographics and the "American melting pot."  The paragraph reads: "Until recently, the largest minority group in the country has been the African American population.  One in eight Americans is a descendent of these reluctant immigrants..."  Now, this quote in and of itself isn't that bad; it just struck me as a good way to begin pointing out some of the flaws in the book.  I thought I would give the quote before I outline the other flaws in the textbook.

1. The book often says ridiculous things, like the "reluctant immigrant" bit.  It seems out of touch with current society and culture, kind of like the ol' grandpa in the family that still calls homosexuals "fairies."  It was published in 2009, so the excuse of it being simply outdated doesn't really work. 

2. The book includes some statistics that are bound to change and doesn't acknowledge that the statistics are bound to change.  For example, when discussing women and minorites in Congress, it gives specific numbers of how many there are in the present tense with no asterisk or any acknowledgement that these numbers will change.

3. The book is wordy, unclear, and badly written.  One such wordy, confusing sentence reads as follows: "Nevertheless, bargaining, in the form of trading support on two or more policies or providing specific benefits for representatives and senators, occurs less often and plays a less critical role in the creation of presidential coalitions in Congress than one might think."  A textbook is supposed to make things clearer, not much more confusing.

4. Lastly, the textbook is dry, boring, uninformative, and its only insights are into the obvious.  Textbooks, as a general rule, are supposed to teach.  However, in this book I often find myself factchecking the book while reading, instead of actually learning. 

Now, after listening to me rant about how bad the book is, one might ask, "So what?" which I believe is an important question.  It's just a bad book, there are plenty of bad books out there.  What's the big deal?  I think the reason I have a problem with it is that it is an AP Textbook, designed to help students do well on the AP test--the cumulative, all-important test.  If all one's supposed to learn for this class can be learned from this god-awful book, then the way the curriculum is structured needs to be seriously reconsidered.