I am surprised to find absolutely NO critique for the following textbook:

"Exploring Business" by Karen Collins.

It seems great at first, mainly because it eliminates the need for a student to buy the textbook by providing it complete and easy to read on their webpage, http://www.flatworldknowledge.com but my very first skeptical reaction was not surprising. The pages were filled with product placement! Yes, the book is about business - of course it will have real world examples; history is important. But the problem I was finding was that all of the giants listed within the pages (I say pages, but really it's a scroll down the screen) were being promoted, not exampled. Apple must be listed at least twelve times in the first chapter alone, and nowhere are they actually necessary for the thought to be complete. They serve no purpose by being in the sentences. Even eHarmony gets a plug!

But again, should I really have been surprised by this? A textbook industry with no market income must need advertising money, right?

So why isn't anyone complaining about it? A google search with any possible combination of the words "review," "Collins," "Karen," "book," "textbook," "exploring," "business," and various forms of the word "critique" yield no results except for promotion. So then I tried Yahoo, Askjeeves, Bing, and pretty much any other search engine I could find. Nothing. Normally, you put in a textbook with review of any kind, and you've got the entire (whichever) wing coming down on it. The fact is, somewhere somebody found something to blow the whistle on. But for some reason, "Exploring Business" is exempt.

So who's out there to say, "Hey! Be aware, the book you are about to read for your business class is full of unidentified ads which portray large companies in favorable light!" (not that this is really a surprise), and "Also it rarely cites information for claims of employee and consumer satisfaction in regards to said companies!"

Really, I'm just a sociology major ranting and raving about either the lack of coverage or the use of restriction over public vocalization, and that is my fault for coming to depend somewhat on search engines paid by big corporations (you'd think I would know better). But seriously.

Fail, Internets. Fail.