Preface

Why did we write this text? Fate, love, and idealism. But in order for that answer to make sense, we should probably begin at the beginning.
Long before we wrote the first word of this text, we had both been actively involved in trying to improve the quality of psychology textbooks—Don as a reviewer and ancillary author for other psychology texts, and Sandy as the senior developmental editor for psychology at a college textbook publishing company. Between the two of us, those efforts added up to almost twenty years of involvement with psychology textbooks. We were both keenly aware of the problems that instructors encountered in their classrooms with introductory psychology texts. In fact, that’s how we first met over the phone during the summer of 1988.
Don had just adopted a new edition of an introductory psychology text when he discovered that many of the test items had nothing to do with the text’s content. He fired off a testy letter to the publisher, which eventually landed on Sandy’s desk. After verifying that Don was right, Sandy enlisted Don’s help in correcting the problem before adopters began using the text that fall. We had several long-distance phone conversations that summer. During those conversations, it became apparent that we shared a genuine concern with improving the quality of psychology textbooks.
The following January, we both attended the Teaching of Psychology Conference, which is held every year in St. Petersburg Beach, Florida. Neither of us was aware that the other was going to be at the conference until we got to Florida. But when Don spotted Sandy’s name on the list of publishers’ representatives, and Sandy spotted Don’s name on the list of conference participants, we both wanted to meet the person who had been on the other end of those summer phone conversations. So at the noisy reception on the first evening of the conference, we both casually scanned the faces in the crowd. Standing on opposite sides of the room while we talked psychology with other conference participants, our eyes met and we both smiled. (Luckily, we were smiling at the right person!) ...