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<p>I personally love the historical notes in math and science books. I think that most students ignore this stuff because it doesn’t contribute to their grades and I think that this is a shame. I went through the first five video lectures of the Yale Open Course Organic Chemistry site and I think that about half of the lectures talked directly about history. I was a bit surprised to see that there were students in the class that could answer the seemingly random history questions on chemistry that the professor tossed out to the class. I assume that the Professor could spend so much time on history because the students could study a lot of the course material on their own.</p>
<p>I think that you’re referring to the color graphics that contribute to the costs of modern textbooks. Harold Jacobs often has cartoon drawings to open a chapter, provide puzzlers or make a funny point. These are simple hand-drawn non-color items and I do think that they add to his textbooks.</p>
<p>I recall using Leslie Lamport’s book on LaTeX, a computer-based typesetting program that I used in the 1980s. His book was a follow-on to Don Knuth’s TexBook. Lamport’s book had the hand-drawn cartoons in his book that added to the material in the chapters. I always appreciated that additional artwork in technical books. Even moreso than the current trend of turning textbooks into strength-training equipment.</p>